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THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 


REPRINTS  FROM  THE  YALE  REVIEW 

r 

A  Book  of  Yale  Review  Verse,  1917. 

War  Poems  from  The  Yale  Review,  1918. 
{Second  Edition,  1919.) 

Four  Americans:  Roosevelt,  Hawthorne, 
Emerson,  Whitman,  1919. 
{Second  Printing,  1920.) 

Milton's  Tercentenary,  1910. 


PUBLISHED  UNDER  THE  AUSPICES  OF 

THE  ELIZABETHAN  CLUB  OF  YALE  UNIVERSITY 

ON  THE  FOUNDATION  ESTABLISHED 

IN  MEMORY  OF 

OLIVER  BATY  CUNNINGHAM 

OF  THE  CLASS  OF  1917,  YALE  COLLEGE 


THE 
CONNECTICUT   WITS 

AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 


BY 
HENRY  A.   BEERS 

PROFESSOR  OF  ENGLISH   LITERATURE   EMERITUS 
YALE  UNIVERSITY 


NEW  HAVEN 
YALE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS       - 

LONDON  •    HUMPHREY  MILFORD  •   OXFORD  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

MDCCCCXX 


COPYRIGHT,  1920,  BY 
YALE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The  Connecticut  Wits         ....  7 

The  Singer  of  the  Old  Swimmin'  Hole  31 

Emerson's  Journals 45 

The  Art  of  Letter  Writing      ...  69 
Thackeray's  Centenary       ....  91 
Retrospects  and  Prospects  of  the  Eng- 
lish Drama 115 

Sheridan 159 

The  Poetry  of  the  Cavaliers     .       .       .  179 

Abraham  Cowley 195 

Milton's   Tercentenary        .       .       .       .213 

Shakespeare's  Contemporaries        .       .  239 


THE  OLIVER  BATY  CUNNINGHAM 
MEMORIAL  PUBLICATION  FUND 


THE  present  volume  is  the  first  work  published  by  the 
Yale  University  Press  on  the  Oliver  Baty  Cunninghani 
Memorial  Publication  Fund.  This  Foundation  was  es- 
tablished May  8,  1920,  by  a  gift  from  Frank  S.  Cun- 
ningham, Esq.,  of  Chicago,  to  Yale  University,  in 
memory  of  his  son,  Captain  Oliver  Baty  Cunningham, 
15th  United  States  Field  Artillery,  who  was  born  in 
Chicago,  September  17,  1894,  and  was  graduated  from 
Yale  College  in  the  Class  of  1917.  As  an  undergraduate 
he  was  distinguished  alike  for  high  scholarship  and  for 
proved  capacity  in  leadership  among  his  fellows,  as  evi- 
denced by  his  selection  as  Gordon  Brown  Prize  Man 
from  his  class.  He  received  his  commission  as  Second 
Lieutenant,  United  States  Field  Artillery,  at  the  First 
Officers'  Training  Camp  at  Fort  Sheridan,  and  in 
December,  1917,  was  detailed  abroad  for  service,  receiv- 
ing subsequently  the  Distinguished  Service  Medal.  He 
was  killed  while  on  active  duty  near  Thiaucourt,  France, 
on  September  17,  1918,  the  twenty-fourth 
anniversary  of  his  birth. 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

IN  the  days  when  Connecticut  counted  in 
the  national  councils;  when  it  had  men  in 
the  patriot  armies,  in  Washington's  Cabi- 
net, in  the  Senate  of  the  United  States — 
men  like  Israel  Putnam,  Roger  Sherman, 
Oliver  Wolcott,  Oliver  Ellsworth, — in  those 
same  days  there  was  a  premature  but  inter- 
esting literary  movement  in  our  little  com- 
monwealth. A  band  of  young  graduates  of 
Yale,  some  of  them  tutors  in  the  college,  or 
in  residence  for  their  Master's  degree, 
formed  themselves  into  a  school  for  the  cul- 
tivation of  letters.  I  speak  advisedly  in 
calling  them  a  school:  they  were  a  group  of 
personal  friends,  united  in  sympathy  by 
similar  tastes  and  principles ;  and  they  had 
in  common  certain  definite,  coherent,  and 
conscious  aims.  These  were,  first,  to  liberal- 
ize and  modernize  the  rigidly  scholastic  cur- 
riculum of  the  college  by  the  introduction  of 
more  elegant  studies :  the  belles  lettres,  the 
literae  humaniores.  Such  was  the  plea  of 
John  Trumbull  in  his  Master's  oration,  "An 
Essay  on  the  Use  and  Advantages  of  the 
Fine  Arts,"  delivered  at  Commencement, 
7 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
1770;  and  in  his  satire,  "The  Progress  of 
Dulness,"  he  had  his  hit  at  the  dry  and  dead 
routine  of  college  learning.  Secondly,  these 
young  men  resolved  to  supply  the  new  re- 
public with  a  body  of  poetry  on  a  scale  com- 
mensurate with  the  bigness  of  American 
scenery  and  the  vast  destinies  of  the  nation : 
epics  resonant  as  Niagara,  and  Pindaric  odes 
lofty  as  our  native  mountains.  And  finally, 
when,  at  the  close  of  the  Revolutionary  War, 
the  members  of  the  group  found  themselves 
reunited  for  a  few  years  at  Hartford,  they 
set  themselves  to  combat,  with  the  weapon  of 
satire,  the  influences  towards  lawlessness  and 
separatism  which  were  delaying  the  adoption 
of  the  Constitution. 

My  earliest  knowledge  of  this  literary 
coterie  was  derived  from  an  article  in  The 
Atlantic  Monthly  for  February,  1865,  "The 
Pleiades  of  Connecticut."  The  "Pleiades,"  to 
wit,  were  John  Trumbull,  Timothy  Dwight, 
David  Humphreys,  Lemuel  Hopkins,  Rich- 
ard Alsop,  and  Theodore  Dwight.  The  tone 
of  the  article  was  ironic.  "Connecticut  is 
pleasant,"  it  said,  "with  wooded  hills  and  a 
beautiful  river;  plenteous  with  tobacco  and 
cheese;  fruitful  of  merchants,  missionaries, 
peddlers,  and  single  women, — but  there  are 
no  poets  known  to  exist  there  .  .  .  the  brisk 
little  democratic  state  has  turned  its  brains 
upon  its  machinery  .  .  .  the  enterprising 
8 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

natives  can  turn  out  any  article  on  which  a 
profit  can  be  made — except  poetry." 

Massachusetts  has  always  been  somewhat 
condescending  towards  Connecticut's  liter- 
ary pretensions.  Yet  all  through  that  very 
volume  of  the  Atlantic,  from  which  I  quote, 
run  Mrs.  Stowe's  "Chimney  Corner"  papers 
and  Donald  Mitchell's  novel,  "Doctor 
Johns" ;  with  here  and  there  a  story  by  Rose 
Terry  and  a  poem  by  Henry  Brownell.  Nay, 
in  an  article  entitled  "Our  Battle  Laureate," 
in  the  May  number  of  the  magazine,  the 
"Autocrat"  himself,  who  would  always  have 
his  fling  at  Connecticut  theology  and  Con- 
necticut spelling  and  pronunciation  ("Web- 
ster's provincials,"  forsooth!  though  pater 
ipse,  the  Rev.  Abiel,  had  been  a  Connecticut 
orthodox  parson,  a  Yale  graduate,  and  a 
son-in-law  of  President  Stiles), — the  "Auto- 
crat," I  say,  takes  off  his  hat  to  my  old  East 
Hartford  neighbor,  Henry  Howard  Brownell. 

He  begins  by  citing  the  paper  which  I 
have  been  citing:  "How  came  the  Muses  to 
settle  in  Connecticut.''  .  .  .  But  the  seed  of 
the  Muses  has  run  out.  No  more  Pleiades  in 
Hartford  .  .  . " ;  and  answers  that,  if  the 
author  of  the  article  asks  Nathanael's  ques- 
tion, putting  Hartford  for  Nazareth,  he  can 
refer  him  to  Brownell's  "Lyrics  of  a  Day." 
"If  Drayton  had  fought  at  Agincourt,  if 
Campbell  had  held  a  sabre  at  Hohenlindcn, 
9 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

if  Scott  had  been  in  the  saddle  with  Mar- 
mion,  if  Tennyson  had  charged  with  the  six 
hundred  at  Balaclava,  each  of  these  poets 
might  possibly  have  pictured  what  he  said  as 
faithfully  and  as  fearfully  as  Mr.  Brownell 
has  painted  the  sea  fights  in  which  he  took 
part  as  a  combatant." 

Many  years  later,  when  preparing  a 
chapter  on  the  literature  of  the  county  for 
the  "Memorial  History  of  Hartford,"  I 
came  to  close  quarters  with  the  sweet  influ- 
ence of  the  Pleiades.  I  am  one  of  the  few  men 
— perhaps  I  am  the  only  man — now  living 
who  have  read  the  whole  of  Joel  Barlow's 
"Columbiad."  "Is  old  Joel  Barlow  yet  alive?" 
asks  Hawthorne's  crazy  correspondent.  "Un- 
conscionable man !  .  .  .  And  does  he  medi- 
tate an  epic  on  the  war  between  Mexico  and 
Texas,  with  machinery  contrived  on  the  prin- 
ciple of  the  steam  engine?"  I  also  "perused" 
(good  old  verb — the  right  word  for  the 
deed!)  Dwight's  "Greenfield  Hill" — a  meri- 
torious action, — but  I  cannot  pretend  to 
have  read  his  "Conquest  of  Canaan"  (the 
diaeresis  is  his,  not  mine),  an  epic  in  eleven 
books  and  in  heroic  couplets.  I  dipped  into 
it  only  far  enough  to  note  that  the  poet  had 
contrived  to  introduce  a  history  of  our  Revo- 
lutionary War,  by  way  of  episode,  among  the 
wars  of  Israel. 

It  must  be  acknowledged  that  this  patri- 
10 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
otic  enterprise  of  creating  a  national  litera- 
ture by  tour  de  force,  was  undertaken  when 
Minerva  was  unwilling.  These  were  able  and 
eminent  men:  scholars,  diplomatists,  legisla- 
tors. Among  their  number  were  a  judge  of 
the  Connecticut  Supreme  Court,  a  college 
president,  foreign  ministers  and  ambassa- 
dors, a  distinguished  physician,  an  officer  of 
the  Revolutionary  army,  intimate  friends  of 
Washington  and  Jefferson.  But,  as  poetry, 
a  few  little  pieces  of  the  New  Jersey  poet, 
Philip  Freneau, — "The  Indian  Student," 
"The  Indian  Burying  Ground,"  "To  a 
Honey  Bee,"  "The  Wild  Honeysuckle,"  and 
"The  Battle  of  Eutaw  Springs," — are  worth 
all  the  epic  and  Pindaric  strains  of  the  Con- 
necticut bards.  Yet  "still  the  shore  a  brave 
attempt  resounds."  For  they  had  few  mis- 
givings and  a  truly  missionary  zeal.  They 
formed  the  first  Mutual  Admiration  Society 
in  our  literary  annals. 

Here  gallant  Humphreys  charm'd  the  list'ning 

throng. 
Sweetly  he  sang,  amid  the  clang  of  arms, 
His    numbers    smooth,    replete    with     winning 

charms. 
In  him  there  shone  a  great  and  godlike  mind, 
The  poet's  wreath  around  the  laurel  twined. 

This  was  while  Colonel  Humphreys  was  in 

the  army — one  of  Washington's  aides.  But 

11 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
when  he  resigned  his  commission, — hark !  'tis 
Barlow  sings : — 

See  Humphreys  glorious  from  the  field  retire. 
Sheathe  the  glad  sword  and  string  the  sounding 

lyre. 
O'er  fallen  friends,  with  all  the  strength  of  woe, 
His  heartfelt  sighs  in  moving  numbers  flow. 
His     country's     wrongs,    her     duties,    dangers, 

praise. 
Fire  his  full  soul,  and  animate  his  lays. 

Humphreys,  in  turn,  in  his  poem  "On  the 
Future  Glory  of  the  United  States  of 
America,"  calls  upon  his  learned  friends  to 
string  their  lyres  and  rouse  their  country- 
men against  the  Barbary  corsairs  who  were 
holding  American  seamen  in  captivity : — 

Why    sleep'st    thou.    Barlow,    child    of   genius  ? 

Why 
See'st  thou,  blest  Dwight,  our  land  in  sadness 

lie? 
And  where  is  Trumbull,  earliest  boast  of  fame.'' 
'Tis   yours,   ye   bards,   to   wake   the   smothered 

flame. 
To  you,  my  dearest  friends,  the  task  belongs 
To  rouse  your  country  with  heroic  songs. 

Yes,  to  be  sure,  where  is  Trumbull,  earliest 
boast  of  fame.'*  He  came  from  Watertown 
(now  a  seat  of  learning),  a  cousin  of  Gover- 
nor Trumbull — "Brother  Jonathan" — and 
a  second  cousin  of  Colonel  John  Trumbull, 
12 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
the  historical  painter,  whose  battle  pieces 
repose  in  the  Yale  Art  Gallery.  Cleverness 
runs  in  the  Trumbull  blood.  There  was,  for 
example,  J.  Hammond  Trumbull  (abbre- 
viated by  lisping  infancy  to  "J.  Hambull") 
in  the  last  generation,  a  great  sagamore — O  a 
very  big  Indian, — reputed  the  only  man  in 
the  country  who  could  read  Eliot's  Algon- 
quin Bible.  I  make  no  mention  of  later  Trum- 
bulls  known  in  letters  and  art.  But  as  for  our 
worthy,  John  Trumbull,  the  poet,  it  is  well 
known  and  has  been  often  told  how  he  passed 
the  college  entrance  examination  at  the  age 
of  seven,  but  forebore  to  matriculate  till  a 
more  reasonable  season,  graduating  in  1767 
and  serving  two  years  as  a  tutor  along  with 
his  friend  Dwight;  afterwards  studying  law 
at  Boston  in  the  office  of  John  Adams,  prac- 
tising at  New  Haven  and  Hartford,  filling 
legislative  and  judicial  positions,  and  dying 
at  Detroit  in  1831. 

Trumbull  was  the  satirist  of  the  group.  As 
a  young  man  at  Yale,  he  amused  his  leisure 
by  contributing  to  the  newspapers  essays  in 
the  manner  of  "The  Spectator"  ("The 
Meddler,"  "The  Correspondent,"  and  the 
like)  ;  and  verse  satires  after  the  fashion  of 
Prior  and  Pope.  There  is  nothing  very  new 
about  the  Jack  Dapperwits,  Dick  Hair- 
brains,  Tom  Brainlesses,  Miss  Harriet  Sim- 
pers, and  Isabella  Sprightlys  of  these  com- 
13 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
positions.  The  very  names  will  recall  to  the 
experienced  reader  the  stock  figures  of  the 
countless  Addisonian  imitations  which  sick- 
lied o'er  the  minor  literature  of  the  eight- 
eenth century.  But  Trumbull's  masterpiece 
was  "M'Fingal,"  a  Hudibrastic  satire  on  the 
Tories,  printed  in  part  at  Philadelphia  in 
1776,  and  in  complete  shape  at  Hartford  in 
1782,  "by  Hudson  and  Goodwin  near  the 
Great  Bridge."  "M'Fingal"  was  the  most 
popular  poem  of  the  Revolution.  It  went 
through  more  than  thirty  editions  in  Amer- 
ica and  England.  In  1864  it  was  edited  with 
elaborate  historical  notes  by  Benson  J.  Loss- 
ing,  author  of  "Pictorial  Field-Book  of  the 
Revolution."  A  reprint  is  mentioned  as  late 
as  1881.  An  edition,  in  two  volumes,  of 
Trumbull's  poetical  works  was  issued  in 
1820. 

Timothy  Dwight  pronounced  "M'Fingal" 
superior  to  "Hudibras."  The  Marquis  de 
Chastellux,  who  had  fought  with  Lafayette 
for  the  independence  of  the  colonies ;  who  had 
been  amused  when  at  Windham,  says  my 
authority,  by  Governor  Jonathan  Trum- 
bull's "pompous  manner  in  transacting  the 
most  trifling  public  business";  and  who 
translated  into  French  Colonel  Humphreys's 
poetical  "Address  to  the  Armies  of  the 
United  States  of  America," — Chastellux 
wrote  to  Trumbull  a  propos  of  his  burlesque : 
14 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

"I  believe  that  you  have  rifled  every  flower 
which  that  kind  of  poetry  could  offer.  .  .  . 
I  prefer  it  to  every  work  of  the  kind, — even 
'Hudibras.'  "  And  Moses  Coit  Tyler,  whose 
four  large  volumes  on  our  colonial  and  revo- 
lutionary literature  are,  for  the  most  part,  a 
much  ado  about  nothing,  waxes  dithyrambic 
on  this  theme.  He  speaks,  for  example,  of 
"the  vast  and  prolonged  impression  it  has 
made  upon  the  American  people."  But  surely 
all  this  is  very  uncritical.  All  that  is  really 
alive  of  "M'Fingal"  are  a  few  smart  couplets 
usually  attributed  to  "Hudibras,"  such  as — 

No  man  e'er  felt  the  halter  draw 
With  good  opinion  of  the  law. 

"M'Fingal"  is  one  of  the  most  successful  of 
the  innumerable  imitations  of  "Hudibras" ; 
still  it  is  an  imitation,  and,  as  such,  inferior 
to  its  original.  But  apart  from  that,  Trum- 
bull was  far  from  having  Butler's  astonish- 
ing resources  of  wit  and  learning,  tedious  as 
they  often  are  from  their  mere  excess.  Nor  is 
the  Yankee  sharpness  of  "M'Fingal"  so  po- 
tent a  spirit  as  the  harsh,  bitter  contempt  of 
Butler,  almost  as  inventive  of  insult  as  the 
saeva  indignatio  of  Swift.  Yet  "M'Fingal" 
still  keeps  a  measure  of  historical  impor- 
tance, reflecting,  in  its  cracked  and  distorted 
mirror  of  caricature,  the  features  of  a 
stormy  time:  the  turbulent  town  meetings, 
16 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
the  liberty  poles  and  bonfires  of  the  patriots ; 
with  the  tar-and-feathering  of  Tories,   and 
their   stolen   gatherings   in  cellars   or  other 
holes  and  corners. 

After  peace  was  declared,  a  number  of 
these  young  writers  came  together  again  in 
Hartford,  where  they  formed  a  sort  of 
literary  club  with  weekly  meetings — "The 
Hartford  Wits,"  who  for  a  few  years  made 
the  little  provincial  capital  the  intellectual 
metropolis  of  the  country.  Trumbull  had 
settled  at  Hartford  in  the  practice  of  the 
law  in  1781.  Joel  Barlow,  who  had  hastily 
qualified  for  a  chaplaincy  in  a  Massachusetts 
brigade  by  a  six  weeks'  course  of  theology, 
and  had  served  more  or  less  sporadically 
through  the  war,  came  to  Hartford  in  the 
year  following  and  started  a  newspaper. 
David  Humphreys,  Yale  1771,  illustrious 
founder  of  the  Brothers  in  Unity  Society, 
and  importer  of  merino  sheep,  had  enlisted 
in  1776  in  a  Connecticut  militia  regiment 
then  on  duty  in  New  York.  He  had  been  on 
the  staff  of  General  Putnam,  whose  life  he 
afterwards  wrote;  had  been  Washington's 
aide  and  a  frequent  inmate  at  Mount  Vernon 
from  1780  to  1783;  then  abroad  (1784- 
1786),  as  secretary  to  the  commission  for 
making  commercial  treaties  with  the  nations 
of  Europe.  (The  commissioners  were  Frank- 
lin, Adams,  and  Jefferson.)  On  returning  to 
16 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
his  native  Derby  in  1786,  he  had  'been  sent 
to  the  legislature  at  Hartford,  and  now 
found  himself  associated  with  Trumbull,  who 
had  entered  upon  his  Yale  tutorship  in  1771, 
the  year  of  Humphreys's  graduation;  and 
with  Barlow,  who  had  taken  his  B.A.  degree 
in  1778.  These  three  Pleiades  drew  to  them- 
selves other  stars  of  lesser  magnitude,  the 
most  remarkable  of  whom  was  Dr.  Lemuel 
Hopkins,  a  native  of  Waterbury,  but  since 
1784  a  practising  physician  at  Hartford  and 
one  of  the  founders  of  the  Connecticut  Medi- 
cal Society.  Hopkins  was  an  eccentric  hu- 
morist, and  is  oddly  described  by  Samuel 
Goodrich — "Peter  Parley" — as  "long  and 
lank,  walking  with  spreading  arms  and 
straddling  legs."  "His  nose  was  long,  lean, 
and  flexible,"  adds  Goodrich, — a  description 
which  suggests  rather  the  proboscis  of  the 
elephant,  or  at  least  of  the  tapir,  than  a 
feature  of  the  human  countenance. 

Other  lights  in  this  constellation  were 
Richard  Alsop,  from  Middletown,  who  was 
now  keeping  a  bookstore  at  Hartford,  and 
Theodore  Dwight,  brother  to  Timothy  and 
brother-in-law  to  Alsop,  and  later  the  secre- 
tary and  historian  of  the  famous  Hartford 
Convention  of  1814,  which  came  near  to 
carrying  New  England  into  secession.  We 
might  reckon  as  an  eighth  Pleiad,  Dr.  Elihu 
H.  Smith,  then  residing  at  Wethersfield,  who 
17 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
published  in  1793  our  first  poetic  miscellany, 
printed — of  all  places  in  the  world — at 
Litchfield,  "mine  own  romantic  town":  seat 
of  the  earliest  American  law  school,  and 
emitter  of  this  earliest  American  anthology. 
If  you  should  happen  to  find  in  your  garret 
a  dusty  copy  of  this  collection,  "American 
Poems,  Original  and  Selected,"  by  Elihu  H. 
Smith,  hold  on  to  it.  It  is  worth  money,  and 
will  be  worth  more. 

The  Hartford  Wits  contributed  to  local 
papers,  such  as  the  New  Haven  Gazette  and 
the  Connecticut  Courant,  a  series  of  political 
lampoons:  "The  Anarchiad,"  "The  Echo," 
and  "The  Political  Greenhouse,"  a  sort  of 
Yankee  "Dunciad,"  "Rolliad,"  and  "Anti- 
Jacobin."  They  were  staunch  Federalists, 
friends  of  a  close  union  and  a  strong  central 
government;  and  used  their  pens  in  support 
of  the  administrations  of  Washington  and 
Adams,  and  to  ridicule  Jefferson  and  the 
Democrats.  It  was  a  time  of  great  confusion 
and  unrest:  of  Shays's  Rebellion  in  Massa- 
chusetts, and  the  irredeemable  paper  cur- 
rency in  Rhode  Island.  In  Connecticut,  De- 
mocratic mobs  were  protesting  against  the 
vote  of  five  years'  pay  to  the  officers  of  the 
disbanded  army.  "The  Echo"  and  "The  Polit- 
ical Greenhouse"  were  published  in  book 
form  in  1807;  "The  Anarchiad"  not  till 
1861,  by  Thomas  H.  Pease,  New  Haven,  with 
18 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
notes  and  introduction  by  Luther  G.  Riggs. 
I  am  not  going  to  quote  these  satires.  They 
amused  their  own  generation  and  doubtless 
did  good.  "The  Echo"  had  the  honor  of  being 
quoted  in  Congress  by  an  angry  Virginian,  to 
prove  that  Connecticut  was  trying  to  draw 
the  country  into  a  war  with  France.  It 
caught  up  cleverly  the  humors  of  the  day, 
now  travestying  a  speech  of  Jefferson,  now 
turning  into  burlesque  a  Boston  town  meet- 
ing. A  local  flavor  is  given  by  allusions  to 
Connecticut  traditions :  Captain  Kidd,  the 
Blue  Laws,  the  Windham  Frogs,  the  Hebron 
pump,  the  Wethersfield  onion  gardens.  But 
the  sparkle  has  gone  out  of  it.  There  is  a 
perishable  element  in  political  satire.  I  find  it 
difficult  to  interest  young  people  nowadays 
even  in  the  "Biglow  Papers,"  which  are  so 
much  superior,  in  every  way,  to  "M'Fingal" 
or  "The  Anarchiad." 

Timothy  Dwight  would  probably  have 
rested  his  title  to  literary  fame  on  his  five 
volumes  of  theology  and  the  eleven  books  of 
his  "Conquest  of  Canaan."  But  the  epic  is 
unread  and  unreadable,  while  theological 
systems  need  constant  restatement  in  an  age 
of  changing  beliefs.  There  is  one  excellent 
hymn  by  Dwight  in  the  collections, — "I  love 
thy  kingdom,  Lord."  His  war  song,  "Co- 
lumbia, Columbia,  in  glory  arise,"  was  once 
admired,  but  has  faded.  I  have  found  it  pos- 
19 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
sible  to  take  a  mild  interest  in  the  long  poem, 
"Greenfield  Hill,"  a  partly  idyllic  and  partly 
moral  didactic  piece,  emanating  from  the 
country  parish,  three  miles  from  the  Sound, 
in  the  town  of  Fairfield,  where  Dwight  was 
pastor  from  1783  to  1795.  The  poem  has 
one  peculiar  feature:  each  of  its  seven  parts 
was  to  have  imitated  the  manner  of  some  one 
British  poet.  Part  One  is  in  the  blank  verse 
and  the  style  of  Thomson's  "Seasons";  Part 
Two  in  the  heroic  couplets  and  the  diction  of 
Goldsmith's  "Traveller"  and  "Deserted  Vil- 
lage." For  lack  of  time  this  design  was  not 
systematically  carried  out,  but  the  reader  is 
reminded  now  of  Prior,  then  of  Cowper,  and 
again  of  Crabbe.  The  nature  descriptions 
and  the  pictures  of  rural  life  are  not  un- 
truthful, though  somewhat  tame  and  conven- 
tional. The  praise  of  modest  competence  is 
sung,  and  the  wholesome  simplicity  of  Ameri- 
can life,  under  the  equal  distribution  of 
wealth,  as  contrasted  with  the  luxury  and 
corruption  of  European  cities.  Social  ques- 
tions are  discussed,  such  as,  "The  state  of 
negro  slavery  in  Connecticut" ;  and  "What  is 
not,  and  what  is,  a  social  female  visit." 
Narrative  episodes  give  variety  to  the  de- 
scriptive and  reflective  portions :  the  burning 
of  Fairfield  in  1779  by  the  British  under 
Governor  Tryon ;  the  destruction  of  the  rem- 
nants of  the  Pequod  Indians  in  a  swamp 
20 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

three  miles  west  of  the  town.  It  is  distressing 
to  have  the  Yankee  farmer  called  "the 
swain,"  and  his  wife  and  daughter  "the  fair," 
in  regular  eighteenth  century  style;  and 
Long  Island,  which  is  always  in  sight  and 
frequently  apostrophized,  personified  as 
"Longa." 

Then  on  the  borders  of  this  sapphire  plain 
Shall   growing  beauties   grace  my   fair  domain 

Gay  groves  exult:  Chinesian  gardens  glow, 
And  bright  reflections  paint  the  wave  below. 

The  poet  celebrates  Connecticut  artists  and 
inventors : — 

Such    forms,    such    deeds    on    Rafael's    tablets 

shine, 
And  such,  O  Trumbull,  glow  alike  on  thine. 

David  Bushnell  of  Saybrook  had  invented 
a  submarine  torpedo  boat,  nicknamed  "the 
American  Turtle,"  with  which  he  undertook 
to  blow  up  Lord  Admiral  Howe's  gunship  in 
New  York  harbor.  Humphreys  gives  an  ac- 
count of  the  failure  of  this  enterprise  in  his 
"Life  of  Putnam."  It  was  some  of  Bushnell's 
machines,  set  afloat  on  the  Delaware,  among 
the  British  shipping,  that  occasioned  the 
panic  celebrated  in  Hopkinson's  satirical 
ballad,  "The  Battle  of  the  Kegs,"  which  we 
used  to  declaim  at  school.  "See,"  exclaims 
Dwight, — 

21 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

See  Bushnell's  strong  creative  genius,  fraught 
With    all    th'     assembled     powers     of     skillful 

thought, 
His  mystic  vessel  plunge  beneath  the  waves 
And    glide    through    dark    retreats    and    coral 

caves ! 

Dr.  Holmes,  who  knew  more  about  Yale 
poets  than  they  know  about  each  other,  has 
rescued  one  line  from  "Greenfield  Hill."  "The 
last  we  see  of  snow,"  he  writes,  in  his  paper 
on  "The  Seasons,"  "is,  in  the  language  of  a 
native  poet. 

The  lingering  drift  behind  the  shady  wall. 

This  is  from  a  bard  more  celebrated  once 
than  now,  Timothy  Dwight,  the  same  from 
whom  we  borrowed  the  piece  we  used  to 
speak,  beginning  (as  we  said  it), 

Columby,  Columby,  to  glory  arise! 

The  line  with  the  drift  in  it  has  stuck  in  my 
memory  like  a  feather  in  an  old  nest,  and  is 
all  that  remains  to  me  of  his  'Greenfield 
Hill.'  " 

As  President  of  Yale  College  from  1795 
to  1817,  Dr.  Dwight,  by  his  sermons,  ad- 
dresses, and  miscellaneous  writings,  his  per- 
sonal influence  with  young  men,  and  his 
public  spirit,  was  a  great  force  in  the  com- 
munity. I  have  an  idea  that  his  "Travels  in 
22 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

New  England  and  New  York,"  posthumously 
published  in  1821-1822,  in  four  volumes,  will 
survive  all  his  other  writings.  I  can  recom- 
mend Dwight's  "Travels"  as  a  really  enter- 
taining book,  and  full  of  solid  observation. 
Of  all  the  wooden  poetry  of  these  Connecti- 
cut bards,  David  Humphreys's  seems  to  me 
the  woodenest, — big  patriotic  verse  essays  on 
the  model  of  the  "Essay  on  Man" ;  "Address 
to  the  Armies  of  the  United  States";  "On 
the  Happiness  of  America" ;  "On  the  Future 
Glory  of  the  United  States";  "On  the  Love 
of  Country";  "On  the  Death  of  George 
Washington,"  etc.  Yet  Humphreys  was  a 
most  important  figure.  He  was  plenipoten- 
tiary to  Portugal  and  Spain,  and  a  trusted 
friend  of  Washington,  from  whom,  perhaps, 
he  caught  that  stately  deportment  which  is 
said  to  have  characterized  him.  He  imported 
a  hundred  merino  sheep  from  Spain,  landing 
them  from  shipboard  at  his  native  Derby, 
then  a  port  of  entry  on  the  lordly  Housa- 
tonic.  He  wrote  a  dissertation  on  merino 
sheep,  and  also  celebrated  the  exploit  in  song. 
The  Massachusetts  Agricultural  Society 
gave  him  a  gold  medal  for  his  services  in  im- 
proving the  native  breed.  But  if  these  sheep 
are  even  remotely  responsible  for  Schedule  K, 
it  might  be  wished  that  they  had  remained  in 
Spain,  or  had  been  as  the  flocks  of  Bo-Peep. 
Colonel  Humphreys  died  at  New  Haven  in 
28 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
1818.  The  college  owns  his  portrait  by 
Stuart,  and  his  monument  in  Grove  Street 
cemetery  is  dignified  by  a  Latin  inscription 
reciting  his  titles  and  achievements,  and  tell- 
ing how,  like  a  second  Jason,  he  brought  the 
auream  vellerem  from  Europe  to  Connecticut. 
Colonel  Humphreys's  works  were  handsomely 
published  at  New  York  in  1804,  with  a  list  of 
subscribers  headed  by  their  Catholic  Majes- 
ties, the  King  and  Queen  of  Spain,  and  fol- 
lowed by  Thomas  Jefferson,  John  Adams, 
and  numerous  dukes  and  chevaliers.  Among 
the  humbler  subscribers  I  am  gratified  to  ob- 
serve the  names  of  Nathan  Beers,  merchant. 
New  Haven;  and  Isaac  Beers  &  Co.,  book- 
sellers. New  Haven  (six  copies), — no  ances- 
tors but  conjecturally  remote  collateral 
relatives  of  the  undersigned. 

I  cannot  undertake  to  quote  from  Hum- 
phreys's poems.  The  patriotic  feeling  that 
prompted  them  was  genuine ;  the  descriptions 
of  campaigns  in  which  he  himself  had  borne 
a  part  have  a  certain  value;  but  the  poetry 
as  such,  though  by  no  means  contemptible,  is 
quite  uninspired.  Homer's  catalogue  of  ships 
is  a  hackneyed  example  of  the  way  in  which 
a  great  poet  can  make  bare  names  poetical. 
Humphreys  had  a  harder  job,  and  passages 
of  his  battle  pieces  read  like  pages  from  a 
city  directory. 

24    • 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

As  fly  autumnal  leaves  athwart  some  dale, 
Borne  on  the  pinions  of  the  sounding  gale, 
Or  glides  the  gossamer  o'er  rustling  reeds, 
Bland's,    Sheldon's,    Moylan's,    Baylor's    battle 

steeds 
So  skimmed  the  plain.  .    .   . 

Then  Huger,  Maxwell,  Mifflin,  Marshall,  Read, 
Hastened  from  states  remote  to  seize  the  meed; 

While    Smallwood,    Parsons,    Shepherd,    Irvine, 

Hand, 
Guest,    Weedon,    Muhlenberg,    leads    each    his 

band. 

Does  the  modern  reader  recognize  a  fore- 
father among  these  heroic  patronymics  ?  Just 
as  good  men  as  fought  at  Marathon  or  Agin- 
court.  Nor  can  it  be  said  of  any  one  of  them 
quia  caret  vate  sacro. 

But  the  loudest  blast  upon  the  trump  of 
fame  was  blown  by  Joel  Barlow.  It  was 
agreed  that  in  him  America  had  produced 
a  supreme  poet.  Born  at  Redding, — where 
Mark  Twain  died  the  other  day, — the  son  of 
a  farmer,  Barlow  was  graduated  at  Yale  in 
1778 — just  a  hundred  years  before  Presi- 
dent Taft.  He  married  the  daughter  of  a 
Guilford  blacksmith,  who  had  moved  to  New 
Haven  to  educate  his  sons ;  one  of  whom, 
Abraham  Baldwin,  afterwards  went  to 
Georgia,  grew  up  with  the  country,  and  be- 
came United  States  Senator. 
25 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

After  the  failure  of  his  Hartford  journal, 
Barlow  went  to  France,  in  1788,  as  agent  of 
the  Scioto  Land  Company,  which  turned  out 
to  be  a  swindling  concern.  He  now  "embraced 
French  principles,"  that  is,  became  a  Jaco- 
bin and  freethinker,  to  the  scandal  of  his  old 
Federalist  friends.  He  wrote  a  song  to  the 
guillotine  and  sang  it  at  festal  gatherings  in 
London.  He  issued  other  revolutionary  lit- 
erature, in  particular  an  "Advice  to  the  Priv- 
ileged Orders,"  suppressed  by  the  British 
government;  whereupon  Barlow,  threatened 
with  arrest,  went  back  to  France.  The  Con- 
vention made  him  a  French  citizen ;  he  specu- 
lated luckily  in  the  securities  of  the  republic, 
which  rose  rapidly  with  the  victories  of  its 
armies.  He  lived  in  much  splendor  in  Paris, 
where  Robert  Fulton,  inventor  of  steamboats, 
made  his  home  with  him  for  seven  years.  In 
1795,  he  was  appointed  United  States  consul 
to  Algiers,  resided  there  two  years,  and  suc- 
ceeded in  negotiating  the  release  of  the 
American  captives  who  had  been  seized  by 
Algerine  pirates.  After  seventeen  years'  ab- 
sence, he  returned  to  America,  and  built  a 
handsome  country  house  on  Rock  Creek, 
Washington,  which  he  named  characteristi- 
cally "Kalorama."  He  had  become  estranged 
from  orthodox  New  England,  and  lived  on 
intimate  terms  with  JeflFerson  and  the  Demo- 
26 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

cratic  leaders,  French  sympathizers,  and 
philosophical  deists. 

In  1811  President  Madison  sent  him  as 
minister  plenipotentiary  to  France,  to  re- 
monstrate with  the  emperor  on  the  subject 
of  the  Berlin  and  Milan  decrees,  which  were 
injuring  American  commerce.  He  was  sum- 
moned to  Wilna,  Napoleon's  headquarters  in 
his  Russian  campaign,  where  he  was  promised 
a  personal  interview.  But  the  retreat  from 
Moscow  had  begun.  Fatigue  and  exposure 
brought  on  an  illness  from  which  Barlow 
died  in  a  small  Polish  village  near  Cracow. 
An  elaborate  biography,  "The  Life  and 
Letters  of  Joel  Barlow,"  by  Charles  Burr 
Todd,  was  published  by  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 
in  1886. 

Barlow's  most  ambitious  undertaking  was 
the  "Columbiad,"  originally  printed  at  Hart- 
ford in  1787  as  "The  Vision  of  Columbus," 
and  then  reissued  in  its  expanded  form  at 
Philadelphia  in  1807:  a  sumptuous  quarto 
with  plates  by  the  best  English  and  French 
engravers  from  designs  by  Robert  Fulton: 
altogether  the  finest  specimen  of  bookmaking 
that  had  then  appeared  in  America.  The 
"Columbiad's"  greatness  was  in  inverse  pro- 
portion to  its  bigness.  Grandiosity  was  its 
author's  besetting  sin,  and  the  plan  of  the 
poem  is  absurdly  grandiose.  It  tells  how 
Hesper  appeared  to  Columbus  in  prison  and 
27 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
led  him  to  a  hill  of  vision  whence  he  viewed 
the  American  continents  spread  out  before 
him,  and  the  panorama  of  their  whole  future 
history  unrolled.  Among  other  things  he  saw 
the  Connecticut  river — 

Thy   stream,   my   Hartford,  through  its  misty 

robe, 
Played  in  the  sunbeams,  belting  far  the  globe. 
No  watery  glades  through  richer  vallies  shine. 
Nor  drinks  the  sea  a  lovelier  wave  than  thine. 

It  is  odd  to  come  upon  familiar  place-names 
swollen  to  epic  pomp.  There  is  Danbury,  for 
example,  which  one  associates  with  the  manu- 
facture of  hats  and  a  somewhat  rowdy  annual 
fair.  In  speaking  of  the  towns  set  on  fire  by 
the  British,  the  poet  thus  exalteth  Danbury, 
whose  flames  were  visible  from  native 
Redding : — 

Norwalk  expands  the  blaze;  o'er  Redding  hills 
High  flaming  Danbury  the  welkin  fills. 
Esopus  burns.  New  York's  deliteful  fanes 
And  sea-nursed  Norfolk  light  the  neighboring 
plains. 

But  Barlow's  best  poem  was  "Hasty 
Pudding,"  a  mock-heroic  after  the  fashion  of 
Philips's  "Cider,"  and  not,  I  think,  inferior 
to  that.  One  couplet,  in  particular,  has  pre- 
vailed against  the  tooth  of  time : — 
28 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

E'en  in  thy  native  regions  how  I  blush 
To  hear  the  Pennsylvanians  call  thee  mush ! 

This  poem  was  written  in  1792  in  Savoy, 
whither  Barlow  had  gone  to  stand  as  deputy 
to  the  National  Convention.  In  a  little  inn  at 
Chambery,  a  bowl  of  polenta,  or  Indian  meal 
pudding,  was  set  before  him,  and  the  familiar 
dish  made  him  homesick  for  Connecticut. 
You  remember  how  Dr.  Holmes  describes  the 
dinners  of  the  young  American  medical  stu- 
dents in  Paris  at  the  Trois  Freres;  and  how 
one  of  them  would  sit  tinkling  the  ice  in  his 
wineglass,  "saying  that  he  was  hearing  the 
cowbells  as  he  used  to  hear  them,  when  the 
deep-breathing  kine  came  home  at  twilight 
from  the  huckleberry  pasture  in  the  old  home 
a  thousand  leagues  towards  the  sunset." 


29 


THE  SINGER  OF  THE  OLD  SWIMMIN' 
HOLE 

MANY  years  ago  I  said  to  one  of  Walt 
Whitman's  biographers :  "Whitman 
may,  as  you  claim,  be  the  poet  of  democracy, 
but  he  is  not  the  poet  of  the  American  peo- 
ple. He  is  the  idol  of  a  literary  culte.  Shall 
I  tell  you  who  the  poet  of  the  American 
people  is  just  at  present?  He  is  James  Whit- 
comb  Riley  of  Indiana."  Riley  used  to  be- 
come quite  blasphemous  when  speaking  of 
Whitman.  He  said  that  the  latter  had  begun 
by  scribbling  newspaper  poetry  of  the  usual 
kind — and  very  poor  of  its  kind — which  had 
attracted  no  attention  and  deserved  none. 
Then  he  suddenly  said  to  himself :  "Go  to !  I 
will  discard  metre  and  rhyme  and  write  some- 
thing startlingly  eccentric  which  will  make 
the  public  sit  up  and  take  notice.  I  will  sound 
my  barbaric  yawp  over  the  roofs  of  the 
world,  and  the  world  will  say — as  in  fact  it 
did — 'here  is  a  new  poetry,  lawless,  virile, 
democratic.  It  is  so  different  from  anything 
hitherto  written,  that  here  must  be  the  great 
American  poet  at  last.'  " 

Now,   I   am   not   going  to   disparage   old 
81 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
Walt.  He  was  big  himself,  and  he  had  an 
extraordinary  feeling  of  the  bigness  of 
America  with  its  swarming  multitudes,  mil- 
lions of  the  plain  people,  whom  God  must 
have  loved,  said  Lincoln,  since  he  made  so 
many  of  them.  But  all  this  in  the  mass.  As 
to  any  dramatic  power  to  discriminate  among 
individuals  and  characterize  them  singly,  as 
Riley  does,  Whitman  had  none.  The}'  are 
all  alike,  all  "leaves  of  grass." 

Well,  my  friend,  and  Walt  Whitman's, 
promised  to  read  Riley's  poems.  And  shortlj' 
I  got  a  letter  from  him  saying  that  he  had 
read  them  with  much  enjoyment,  but  adding, 
"Surely  you  would  not  call  him  a  great  na- 
tional poet."  Now  since  his  death,  the  news- 
paper critics  have  been  busy  with  this  ques- 
tion. His  poetry  was  true,  sweet,  original; 
but  was  it  great?  Suppose  we  leave  aside  for 
the  moment  this  question  of  greatness.  Who 
are  the  great  poets,  anyway.''  Was  Robert 
Burns  one  of  them.'*  He  composed  no  epics, 
no  tragedies,  no  high  Pindaric  odes.  But  he 
made  the  songs  of  the  Scottish  people,  and 
is  become  a  part  of  the  national  conscious- 
ness of  the  race.  In  a  less  degree,  but  after 
the  same  fashion,  Riley's  poetry  has  taken 
possession  of  the  popular  heart.  I  am  told 
that  his  sales  outnumber  Longfellow's.  This 
is  not  an  ultimate  test,  but  so  far  as  it  goes 
it  is  a  valid  one. 

32 


SINGER  OF  THE  OLD  SWIMMIN'  HOLE 
Riley  is  the  Hoosier  poet,  but  he  is  more 
than  that:  he  is  a  national  poet.  His  state 
and  his  city  have  honored  themselves  in  hon- 
oring him  and  in  keeping  his  birthday  as  a 
public  holiday.  The  birthdays  of  nations  and 
of  kings  and  magistrates  have  been  often  so 
kept.  We  have  our  fourth  of  July,  our 
twenty-second  of  February,  our  Lincoln's 
birthday;  and  we  had  a  close  escape  from 
having  a  McKinley  day.  I  do  not  know  that 
the  banks  are  closed  and  the  children  let  out 
of  school — Riley's  children,  for  all  children 
are  his — on  each  succeeding  seventh  of  Octo- 
ber ;  but  I  think  there  is  no  record  elsewhere 
in  our  literary  history  of  a  tribute  so  loving 
and  so  universal  to  a  mere  man  of  letters,  as 
the  Hoosier  State  pays  annually  to  its  sweet 
singer.  Massachusetts  has  its  poets  and  is 
rightly  proud  of  them,  but  neither  Bryant 
nor  Emerson  nor  Lowell  nor  Holmes,  nor  the 
more  popular  Longfellow  or  Whittier,  has 
had  his  natal  day  marked  down  on  the  calen- 
dar as  a  yearly  state  festa.  And  yet  poets, 
novelists,  playwriters,  painters,  musical  com- 
posers, artists  of  all  kinds,  have  added  more 
to  the  sum  of  human  happiness  than  all  the 
kings  and  magistrates  that  ever  lived.  Per- 
haps Indianians  are  warmer  hearted  than 
New  Englanders ;  or  perhaps  they  make  so 
much  of  their  poets  because  there  are  fewer 
of  them.  But  this  is  not  the  whole  secret  of  it. 
33 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

In  a  sense,  Riley's  poems  are  provincial. 
They  are  intensely  true  to  local  conditions, 
local  scenery  and  dialect,  childish  memories 
and  the  odd  ways  and  characters  of  little 
country  towns.  But  just  for  this  faithfulness 
to  their  environment  these  "poems  here  at 
home"  come  home  to  others  whose  homes  are 
far  away  from  the  Wabash,  but  are  not  so 
very  different  after  all. 

America,  as  has  often  been  said,  is  a  land 
of  homes:  of  dwellers  in  villages,  on  farms, 
and  in  small  towns.  We  are  common  people, 
middle-class  people,  conservative,  decent, 
religious,  tenacious  of  old  ways,  home-keep- 
ing and  home-loving.  We  do  not  thrill  to 
Walt  Whitman's  paeans  to  democracy  in  the 
abstract;  but  we  vibrate  to  every  touch  on 
the  chord  of  family  affections,  of  early 
friendships,  and  of  the  dear  old  homely 
things  that  our  childhood  knew.  Americans 
are  sentimental  and  humorous ;  and  Riley 
abounds  in  sentiment — wholesome  sentiment 
— and  natural  humor,  while  Whitman  had 
little  of  either. 

To  all  Americans  who  were  ever  boys ;  to 
all,  at  least  who  have  had  the  good  luck  to 
be  country  boys  and  go  barefoot;  whether 
they  dwell  in  the  prairie  states  of  the  Mid- 
dle West,  or  elsewhere,  the  scenes  and  char- 
acters of  Riley's  poems  are  familiar:  Little 
Orphant  Annie  and  the  Raggedy  Man,  and 
34 


SINGER  OF  THE  OLD  SWIMMIN'  HOLE 

the  Old  Swimmin'  Hole  and  Griggsby's  Sta- 
tion "where  we  ust  to  be  so  happy  and  so 
pore."  They  know  when  the  frost  is  on  the 
"punkin,"  and  that  the  "Gobble-uns  '11  git 
you  ef  you  don't  watch  out" ;  and  how  the  old 
tramp  said  to  the  Raggedy  Man: — 

You're  a  purty  man ! — You  air ! — 

With  a  pair  o'  eyes  like  two  fried  eggs, 

An'  a  nose  like  a  Bartlutt  pear ! 

They  have  all,  in  their  time,  followed  along 
after  the  circus  parade,  listened  to  the  old 
village  band  playing  tunes  like  "Lily  Dale" 
and  "In  the  Hazel  Dell  my  Nellie's  Sleeping" 
and  "Rosalie,  the  Prairie  Flower";  have 
heard  the  campaign  stump  speaker  when  he 
"cut  loose  on  monopolies  and  cussed  and 
cussed  and  cussed";  have  belonged  to  the 
literary  society  which  debated  the  questions 
whether  fire  or  water  was  the  most  destruc- 
tive element;  whether  town  life  was  prefer- 
able to  country  life;  whether  the  Indian  or 
the  negro  had  suffered  more  at  the  hands  of 
the  white  man;  or  whether  the  growth  of 
Roman  Catholicism  in  this  country  is  a  men- 
ace to  our  free  institutions.  And  was  the 
execution  of  Charles  the  First  justifiable? 
Charles  is  dead  now ;  but  this  good  old  debate 
question  will  never  die.  They  knew  the  joys 
of  "eatin'  out  on  the  porch"  and  the  woes  of 
having  your  sister  lose  your  jackknife 
85 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
through  a   crack   in   the  barn   floor;   or   of 
tearing  your  thumb  nail  in  trying  to  get  the 
nickel  out  of  the  tin  savings  bank. 

The  poets  we  admire  are  many;  the  poets 
we  love  are  few.  One  of  the  traits  that  endear 
Riley  to  his  countrymen  is  his  cheerfulness. 
He  is  "Sunny  Jim."  The  south  wind  and  the 
sun  are  his  playmates.  The  drop  of  bitter- 
ness mixed  in  the  cup  of  so  many  poets  seems 
to  have  been  left  out  of  his  life  potion.  And 
so,  while  he  does  not  rouse  us  with  "the 
thunder  of  the  trumpets  of  the  night,"  or 
move  us  with  the  deep  organ  tones  of  tragic 
grief,  he  never  fails  to  hearten  and  console. 
And  though  tragedy  is  absent  from  his  verse, 
a  tender  pathos,  kindred  to  his  humor,  is 
everywhere  present.  Read  over  again  "The 
Old  Man  and  Jim,"  or  "Nothin'  to  Say,  my 
Daughter,"  or  any  of  his  poems  on  the 
deaths  of  children ;  for  a  choice  that  poign- 
ant little  piece,  "The  Lost  Kiss,"  compa- 
rable with  Coventry  Patmore's  best  poem, 
"The  Toys,"  in  which  the  bereaved  father 
speaks  his  unavailing  remorse  because  he  had 
once  spoken  crossly  to  his  little  girl  when  she 
came  to  his  desk  for  a  good-night  kiss  and 
interrupted  him  at  his  work. 

Riley  followed  the  bent  of  his  genius  and 

gave  himself  just  the  kind  of  training  that 

fitted  him  to  do  his  work.  He  never  had  any 

regular  education,  adopted  no  trade  or  pro- 

36 


SINGER  OF  THE  OLD  SWIMMIN'  HOLE 

fession,  never  married  and  had  children,  but 
kept  himself  free  from  set  tasks  and  from 
those  responsibilities  which  distract  the 
poet's  soul.  His  muse  was  a  truant,  and  he 
was  a  runaway  schoolboy  who  kept  the  heart 
of  a  boy  into  manhood  and  old  age,  which 
is  one  definition  of  genius.  He  was  better 
employed  when  he  joined  a  circus  troupe  or 
a  travelling  medicine  van,  or  set  up  as  a  sign 
painter,  or  simply  lay  out  on  the  grass, 
"knee  deep  in  June,"  than  if  he  had  shut 
himself  up  in  a  school  or  an  office.  He  did 
no  routine  work,  but  wrote  when  he  felt  like 
it,  when  he  was  in  the  mood.  Fortunately  the 
mood  recurred  abundantly,  and  so  we  have 
about  two  dozen  volumes  from  him,  filled  with 
lovely  poetry.  Most  of  us  do  hack  work, 
routine  work,  because  we  can  do  nothing 
better.  But  for  the  creative  artist,  hack  work 
is  a  waste.  Creative  work,  when  one  is  in  the 
mood,  is  more  a  pleasure  than  a  toil;  and 
Riley  worked  hard  at  his  verse-making.  For 
he  was  a  most  conscientious  artist;  and  all 
those  poems  of  his,  seemingly  so  easy, 
natural,  spontaneous,  were  the  result  of  la- 
bor, though  of  labor  joyously  borne.  How 
fine  his  art  was  perhaps  only  those  can  fully 
appreciate  who  have  tried  their  own  hands 
at  making  verses.  Some  of  the  things  that 
he  said  to  me  about  the  use  and  abuse  of 
dialect  in  poetry  and  concerning  similar 
37 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
points,    showed    me    how    carefully    he    had 
thought  out  the  principles  of  composition. 

He  thought  most  dialect  poetry  was  over- 
done; recalling  that  delightful  anecdote 
about  the  member  of  the  Chicago  Browning 
Club  who  was  asked  whether  he  liked  dialect 
verse,  and  who  replied:  "Some  of  it.  Eugene 
Field  is  all  right.  But  the  other  day  I  read 
some  verses  by  a  fellow  named  Chaucer,  and 
he  carries  it  altogether  too  far." 

In  particular,  Riley  objected  to  the  habit 
which  many  writers  have  of  labelling  their 
characters  with  descriptive  names  like  Sir 
Lucius  O'Trigger  and  Birdofredum  Sawin. 
I  reminded  him  that  English  comedy  from 
"Ralph  Roister  Doister"  down  had  practised 
this  device.  (In  Ben  Jonson  it  is  the  rule.) 
And  that  even  such  an  artist  as  Thackeray 
employed  it  frequently  with  droll  effect: 
Lady  Jane  Sheepshanks,  daughter  of  the 
Countess  of  Southdown,  and  so  forth.  But 
he  insisted  that  it  was  a  departure  from 
vraisemblance  which  disturbed  the  impres- 
sion of  reality. 

In  seeking  to  classify  these  Hoosier  poems, 
we  are  forced  back  constantly  to  a  compari- 
son with  the  Doric  singers:  with  William 
Barnes,  the  Dorsetshire  dialect  poet ;  and 
above  all  with  Robert  Burns.  Wordsworth  in 
his  "Lyrical  Ballads,"  and  Tennyson  in  his 
few  rural  idyls  like  "Dora"  and  "The  Brook" 
38 


SINGER  OF  THE  OLD  SWIMMIN'  HOLE 

dealt  also  with  simple,  country  life,  the  life 
of  Cumberland  dalesmen  and  Lincolnshire 
farmers.  But  these  poets  are  in  another  class. 
They  are  grave  philosophers,  cultivated 
scholars,  university  men,  writing  in  academic 
English;  writing  with  sympathy  indeed,  but 
from  a  point  of  view  outside  the  life  which 
they  depict.  In  our  own  country  there  are 
Will  Carleton's  "Farm  Ballads,"  handling 
the  same  homely  themes  as  Riley's ;  handling 
them  truthfully,  sincerely,  but  prosaically. 
Carleton  could  not 

.    .    .  add  the  gleam, 
The  light  that  never  was,  on  sea  or  land, 
The  consecration,  and  the  poet's  dream. 

But  Riley's  world  of  common  things  and 
plain  folks  is  always  lit  up  by  the  lamp  of 
beauty.  Then  there  is  Whittier.  He  was  a 
farmer  lad,  and  was  part  of  the  life  that  he 
wrote  of.  He  belonged;  and,  like  Riley,  he 
knew  his  Burns.  I  think,  indeed,  that  "Snow- 
Bound"  is  a  much  better  poem  than  "The 
Cotter's  Saturday  Night."  Whittier's  fellow 
Quaker,  John  Bright,  in  an  address  to  Brit- 
ish workingmen,  advised  them  to  read  Whit- 
tier's poems,  if  they  wanted  to  understand 
the  spirit  of  the  American  people.  Well,  the 
spirit  of  New  England,  let  us  say,  if  not  of 
all  America.  For  Whittier  is  in  some  ways 
provincial,  and  rightly  so.  But  though  he 
39 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
uses  homely  New  England  words  like 
"chore,"  he  does  not,  so  far  as  I  remember, 
essay  dialect  except  in  "Skipper  Ireson's 
Ride";  and  that  is  Irish  if  it  is  anything. 
No  Yankee  women  known  to  me  talk  like  the 
fishwives  of  Marblehead  in  that  popular  but 
overrated  piece.  Then  there  are  the  "Biglow 
Papers,"  which  remind  of  Riley's  work  on  the 
humorous,  as  Whittier's  ballads  do  on  the 
serious  side.  Lowell  made  a  careful  study  of 
the  New  England  dialect  and  the  "Biglow 
Papers"  are  brilliantly  true  to  the  shrewd 
Yankee  wit;  but  they  are  political  satires 
rather  than  idyls.  Where  they  come  nearest 
to  these  Hoosier  ballads  or  to  "Sunthin'  in 
the  Pastoral  Line"  is  where  they  record  old 
local  ways  and  institutions.  "This  kind  o' 
sogerin,"  writes  Birdofredum  Sawin,  who  is 
disgustedly  campaigning  in  Mexico,  like  our 
National  Guards  of  yesterday: — 

This  kind  o'  sogerin'  aint  a  mite  like  our  Octo- 
ber trainin', 

A  chap  could  clear  right  out  from  there  ef  't 
only  looked  like  rainin', 

An'  th'  Cunnles,  tu,  could  kiver  up  their  shap- 
poes  with  bandanners, 

An'  send  the  insines  skootin'  to  the  bar-room 
with  their  banners 

(Fear  o'  gittin'  on  'em  spotted),  .    .    . 

Isn't  that  something  like  Riley.''  Lowell,  of 

course,  is  a  more  imposing  literary  figure, 

40 


SINGER  OF  THE  OLD  SWIMMIN'  HOLE 
and  he  tapped  intellectual  sources  to  which 
the  younger  poet  had  no  access.  But  I  still 
think  Riley  the  finer  artist.  Benjamin  F. 
Johnson,  of  Boone,  the  quaint,  simple,  inno- 
cent old  Hoosier  farmer,  is  a  more  convinc- 
ing person  than  Rosea  Biglow.  In  many  of 
the  "Biglow  Papers"  sentiment,  imagery, 
vocabulary,  phrase,  are  often  too  elevated 
for  the  speaker  and  for  his  dialect.  Riley  is 
not  guilty  of  this  inconsistency;  his  touch 
here  is  absolutely  correct. 

Riley's  work  was  anything  but  academic; 
and  I  am  therefore  rather  proud  of  the  fact 
that  my  university  was  the  first  to  confer 
upon  him  an  honorary  degree.  I  cannot  quite 
see  why  geniuses  like  Mark  Twain  and  Riley, 
whose  books  are  read  and  loved  by  hundreds 
.of  thousands  of  their  countrymen,  should 
care  very  much  for  a  college  degree.  The  fact 
remains,  however,  that  they  are  gratified  by 
the  compliment,  which  stamps  their  perform- 
ances with  a  sort  of  official  sanction,  like 
the  couronne  par  V Academie  Frangaise  on 
the  title-page  of  a  French  author. 

When  Mr.  Riley  came  on  to  New  Haven 
to  take  his  Master's  degree,  he  was  a  bit 
nervous  about  making  a  public  appearance  in 
unwonted  conditions ;  although  he  had  been 
used  to  facing  popular  audiences  with  great 
applause  when  he  gave  his  delightful  readings 
from  his  own  poems,  with  humorous  imper- 
41 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
sonations  in  prose  as  good  as  Beatrice  Her- 
ford's  best  monologues.  He  rehearsed  the  af- 
fair in  advance,  trying  on  his  Master's  gown 
and  reading  me  his  poem,  "No  Boy  Knows 
when  He  Goes  to  Sleep,"  which  he  proposed  to 
use  if  called  on  for  a  speech.  He  asked  me  if 
it  would  do :  it  did.  For  at  the  alumni  dinner 
which  followed  the  conferring  of  degrees, 
when  Riley  got  to  his  feet  and  read  the  piece, 
the  audience  broke  loose.  It  was  evident  that, 
whatever  the  learned  gentlemen  on  the  plat- 
form might  think,  the  undergraduates  and 
the  young  alumni  knew  their  Riley ;  and  that 
his  enrolment  on  the  Yale  catalogue  was  far 
and  away  the  most  popular  act  of  the  day. 
For  in  truth  there  is  nothing  cloistral  or  high 
and  dry  among  our  modern  American  col- 
leges. A  pessimist  on  my  own  faculty  even 
avers  that  the  average  undergraduate  nowa- 
days reads  nothing  beyond  the  sporting 
columns  in  the  New  York  newspapers.  There 
were  other  distinguished  recipients  of  degrees 
at  that  same  Commencement.  One  leading 
statesman  was  made  a  Doctor  of  Laws :  Mr. 
Riley  a  Master  of  Arts.  Of  course  a  mere 
man  of  letters  cannot  hope  to  rank  with  a 
politician.  If  Shakespeare  and  Ben  Butler 
had  been  contemporaries  and  had  both  come 
up  for  a  degree  at  the  same  Commencement — 
supposing  any  college  willing  to  notice  But- 
ler at  all — why  Ben  would  have  got  an  LL.D. 
42 


SINGER  OF  THE  OLD  SWIMMIN'  HOLE 
and  William  an  M.A.  Yet  exactly  why  should 
this  be  so?  For  as  I  am  accustomed  to  say  of 
John  Hay,  anybody  can  be  Secretary  of 
State,  but  it  took  a  smart  man  to  write 
"Little  Breeches"  and  "The  Mystery  of 
Gilgal." 


EMERSON  AND  HIS  JOURNALS 

THE  publication  of  Emerson's  journals,* 
kept  for  over  half  a  century,  is  a  pre- 
cious gift  to  the  reading  public.  It  is  well 
known  that  he  made  an  almost  daily  record 
of  his  thoughts :  that,  when  called  upon  for 
a  lecture  or  address,  he  put  together  such 
passages  as  would  dovetail,  without  too 
anxious  a  concern  for  unity;  and  that  from 
all  these  sources,  by  a  double  distillation,  his 
perfected  essays  were  finally  evolved. 

Accordingly,  many  pages  are  here 
omitted  which  are  to  be  found  in  his  pub-, 
lished  works,  but  a  great  wealth  of  matter 
remains — chips  from  his  workshop — which 
will  be  new  to  the  reader.  And  as  he  always 
composed  carefully,  even  when  writing  only 
for  his  own  eye,  and  as  consecutiveness  was 
never  his  long  suit,  these  entries  may  be  read 
with  a  pleasure  and  profit  hardly  less  than 
are  given  by  his  finished  writings. 

The  editors,  with  excellent  discretion, 
have  sometimes  allowed  to  stand  the  first 
outlines,  in  prose  or  verse,  of  work  long  fa- 

*  Journals  of  Ralph.  Waldo  Emerson,  1820-76. 
Edited  by  E.  W,  Emerson  and  Waldo  E.  Forbes. 
Houghton  Mifflin  Company,  Boston,  1909-14. 

45 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
miliar  in  its  completed  shape.  Here,  for  in- 
stance, is  the  germ  of  a  favorite  poem : 

"August  28.  [1838.] 
"It  is  very  grateful  to  my  feelings  to  go 
into  a  Roman  cathedral,  yet  I  look  as  my 
countrymen  do  at  the  Roman  priesthood.  It 
is  very  grateful  to  me  to  go  into  an  English 
church  and  hear  the  liturgy  read.  Yet 
nothing  would  induce  me  to  be  the  English 
priest.  I  find  an  unpleasant  dilemma  in  this 
nearer  home." 

This  dilemma  is  "The  Problem."  And  here 
again  is  the  original  of  "The  Two  Rivers," 
"as  it  came  to  mind,  sitting  by  the  river,  one 
April  day"  (April  5,  1856)  : 

"Thy  Voice  is  sweet,  Musketaquid ;  repeats 
the  music  of  the  rain;  but  sweeter  rivers 
silent  flit  through  thee,  as  thou  through 
Concord  plain. 

"Thou  art  shut  in  thy  banks ;  but  the 
stream  I  love,  flows  in  thy  water,  and  flows 
through  rocks  and  through  the  air,  and 
through  darkness,  and  through  men,  and 
women.  I  hear  and  see  the  inundation  and 
eternal  spending  of  the  stream,  in  winter 
and  in  summer,  in  men  and  animals,  in  pas- 
sion and  thought.  Happy  are  they  who  can 
hear  it. 

"I  see  thy  brimming,  eddying  stream,  and 
46 


EMERSON  AND  HIS  JOURNALS 

thy  enchantment.  For  thou  changest  every 
rock  in  thy  bed  into  a  gem;  all  is  real  opal 
and  agate,  and  at  will  thou  pavest  with  dia- 
monds. Take  them  away  from  thy  stream, 
and  they  are  poor  shards  and  flints :  So  is  it 
with  me  to-day." 

These  journals  differ  from  common  diaries 
in  being  a  chronicle  of  thoughts,  rather  than 
of  events,  or  even  of  impressions.  Emerson 
is  the  most  impersonal  of  writers,  which  ac- 
counts in  part,  and  by  virtue  of  the  attrac- 
tion of  opposites,  for  the  high  regard  in 
which  he  held  that  gossip,  Montaigne.  Still, 
there  are  jottings  enough  of  foreign  travel, 
lecture  tours,  domestic  incidents,  passing 
public  events,  club  meetings,  college  reunions, 
walks  and  talks  with  Concord  neighbors,  and 
the  like,  to  afford  the  material  of  a  new 
biography,*  which  has  been  published  uni- 
formly with  the  ten  volumes  of  journals.  And 
the  philosopher  held  himself  so  aloof  from 
vulgar  curiosity  that  the  general  reader, 
who  breathes  with  difficulty  in  the  rarefied 
air  of  high  speculations,  will  perhaps  turn 
most  readily  to  such  more  intimate  items  as 
occur.  As  where  his  little  son — the  "deep- 
eyed  boy"  of  the  "Threnody" — being  taken 
to  the  circus,  said  a  propos  of  the  clown, 

*Ralph  Waldo  Emerson.  By  O.  W.  Firkins. 
Houghton  Mifflin  Company,  1915. 

47 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

"Papa,  the  funny  man  makes  me  want  to  go 
home."  Emerson  adds  that  he  and  Waldo 
were  of  one  mind  on  the  subject;  and  one 
thereupon  recalls  a  celebrated  incident  in  the 
career  of  Mark  Twain.  The  diarist  is  not 
above  setting  down  jests — even  profane  jests 
— with  occasional  anecdotes,  bons  mots,  and 
miscellaneous  witticisms  like  "an  ordinary 
man  or  a  Christian."  I,  for  one,  would  like 

to  know  who  was  the  "Miss  of  New 

Haven,  who  on  reading  Ruskin's  book  [pre- 
sumably "Modern  Painters"],  said  'Nature 
was  Mrs.  Turner.'  "  Were  there  such  witt}' 
fair  in  the  New  Haven  of  1848.'' 

In  the  privacy  of  his  journals,  every  man 
allows  himself  a  license  of  criticism  which 
he  would  hardly  practise  in  public.  The  limi- 
tations or  eccentricities  of  Emerson's  liter- 
ary tastes  are  familiar  to  most;  such  as  his 
dislike  of  Shelley  and  contempt  for  Poe,  "the 
jingle  man."  But  here  is  a  judgment,  calmly 
penned,  which  rather  takes  one's  breath 
away :  "Nathaniel  Hawthorne's  reputation  as 
a  writer  is  a  very  pleasing  fact,  because  his 
writing  is  not  good  for  anything,  and  this  is 
a  tribute  to  the  man."  This,  to  be  sure,  was 
in  1842,  eight  years  before  the  appearance 
of  "The  Scarlet  Letter."  Yet,  to  the  last,  the 
romancer's  obsession  with  the  problem  of  evil 
affected  the  resolved  optimist  as  unwhole- 
some. Indeed  he  speaks  impatiently  of  all 
48 


EMERSON  AND  HIS  JOURNALS 

novels,  and  prophesies  that  they  will  give 
way  by  and  by  to  autobiographies  and 
diaries.  The  only  exception  to  his  general 
distaste  for  fiction  is  "The  Bride  of  Lammer- 
moor,"  which  he  mentions  repeatedly  and 
with  high  praise,  comparing  it  with 
Aeschylus. 

The  entry  concerning  Moore's  "Life  of 
Sheridan"  is  surprisingly  savage — ^less  like 
the  gentle  Emerson  than  like  his  truculent 
friend  Carlyle:  "He  details  the  life  of  a 
mean,  fraudulent,  vain,  quarrelsome  play- 
actor, whose  wit  lay  in  cheating  tradesmen, 
whose  genius  was  used  in  studying  jokes  and 
bons  mots  at  home  for  a  dinner  or  a  club, 
who  laid  traps  for  the  admiration  of  cox- 
combs, who  never  did  anything  good  and 
never  said  anything  wise." 

Emerson's  biographers  make  a  large  claim 
for  him.  One  calls  him  "the  first  of  American 
thinkers":  another,  "the  only  great  mind  in 
American  literature."  This  is  a  generous 
challenge,  but  I  believe  that,  with  proper 
definition,  it  may  be  granted.  When  it  is  re- 
membered that  among  American  thinkers  are 
Jonathan  Edwards,  Benjamin  Franklin, 
Alexander  Hamilton,  William  James,  and 
Willard  Gibbs,  one  hesitates  to  subscribe  to 
so  absolute  a  verdict.  Let  it  stand  true, 
however,  with  the  saving  clause,  "after  the 
intuitional  order  of  thought."  Emerson 
49 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

dwelt  with  the  insights  of  the  Reason  and  not 
with  the  logically  derived  judgments  of  the 
Understanding.  (He  capitalizes  the  names  of 
these  faculties,  which  translate  the  Kantian 
Vernunft  and  Verstand.)  Dialectics  he  es- 
chewed, professing  himself  helpless  to  con- 
duct an  argument.  He  announced  truths,  but 
would  not  undertake  to  say  by  what  process 
of  reasoning  he  reached  them.  They  were  not 
the  conclusions  of  a  syllogism:  they  were 
borne  in  upon  him — revelations.  At  New 
Bedford  he  visited  the  meetings  of  the 
Quakers,  and  took  great  interest  in  their 
doctrine  of  the  inner  light. 

When  the  heresies  of  the  "Divinity  School 
Address"  (1838)  were  attacked  by  orthodox 
Unitarians  (if  there  is  such  a  thing  as  an 
orthodox  Unitarian)  like  Andrews  Norton 
in  "The  Latest  Form  of  Infidelity,"  and 
Henry  Ware  in  his  sermon  on  "The  Person- 
ality of  God,"  Emerson  made  no  attempt  to 
defend  his  position.  In  a  cordial  letter  to 
Ware  he  wrote:  "I  could  not  possibly  give 
you  one  of  the  'arguments'  you  cruelly  hint 
at,  on  which  any  doctrine  of  mine  stands ; 
for  I  do  not  know  what  arguments  are  in 
reference  to  any  expression  of  a  thought.  I 
delight  in  telling  what  I  think;  but  if  you 
ask  me  how  I  dare  say  so,  or  why  it  is  so,  I 
am  the  most  helpless  of  mortal  men." 

Let  me  add  a  few  sentences  from  the  noble 
50 


EMERSON  AND  HIS  JOURNALS 

and  beautiful  passage  written  at  sea,  Sep- 
tember 17,  1833:  "Yesterday  I  was  asked 
what  I  mean  by  morals.  I  reply  that  I  cannot 
define,  and  care  not  to  define.  .  .  .  That 
which  I  cannot  yet  declare  has  been  my  angel 
from  childhood  until  now.  ...  It  cannot  be 
defeated  by  my  defeats.  It  cannot  be  ques- 
tioned though  all  the  martyrs  apostatize. 
.  .  .  What  is  this  they  say  about  wanting 
mathematical  certainty  for  moral  truths.''  I 
have  always  affirmed  they  had  it.  Yet  they 
ask  me  whether  I  know  the  soul  immortal. 
No.  But  do  I  not  know  the  Now  to  be  eter- 
nal .'^  .  .  .  Men  seem  to  be  constitutionally 
believers  and  unbelievers.  There  is  no  bridge 
that  can  cross  from  a  mind  in  one  state  to 
a  mind  in  the  other.  All  my  opinions,  affec- 
tions, whimsies,  are  tinged  with  belief, — in- 
cline to  that  side.  .  .  .  But  I  cannot  give 
reasons  to  a  person  of  a  different  persuasion 
that  are  at  all  adequate  to  the  force  of  my 
conviction.  Yet  when  I  fail  to  find  the  reason, 
my  faith  is  not  less." 

No  doubt  most  men  cherish  deep  beliefs 
for  which  they  can  assign  no  reasons:  "real 
assents,"  rather  than  "notional  assents,"  in 
Newman's  phrase.  But  Emerson's  profession 
of  inability  to  argue  need  not  be  accepted  too 
literally.  It  is  a  mask  of  humility  covering  a 
subtle  policy :  a  plea  in  confession  and  avoid- 
ance: a  throwing  off  of  responsibility  in 
51 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
forma  pauperis.  He  could  argue  well,  when 
he  wanted  to.  In  these  journals,  for  example, 
he  exposes,  with  admirable  shrewdness,  the 
unreasonableness  and  inconsistency  of  Al- 
cott,  Thoreau,  and  others,  who  refused  to 
pay  taxes  because  Massachusetts  enforced 
the  fugitive  slave  law:  "As  long  as  the  state 
means  you  well,  do  not  refuse  your  pistareen. 
You  have  a  tottering  cause:  ninety  parts  of 
the  pistareen  it  will  spend  for  what  you 
think  also  good :  ten  parts  for  mischief.  You 
cannot  fight  heartily  for  a  fraction.  .  .  . 
The  state  tax  does  not  pay  the  Mexican  War. 
Your  coat,  your  sugar,  your  Latin  and 
French  and  German  book,  your  watch  does. 
Yet  these  you  do  not  stick  at  buying." 

Again,  is  it  true  that  Emerson  is  the  only 
great  mind  in  American  literature.''  Of  his 
greatness  of  mind  there  can  be  no  question ; 
but  how  far  was  that  mind  in  literature?  No 
one  doubts  that  Poe,  or  Hawthorne,  or  Long- 
fellow, or  Irving  was  in  literature :  was,  above 
all  things  else,  a  man  of  letters.  But  the 
gravamen  of  Emerson's  writing  appears  to 
many  to  fall  outside  of  the  domain  of  letters : 
to  lie  in  the  provinces  of  ethics,  religion,  and 
speculative  thought.  They  acknowledge  that 
his  writings  have  wonderful  force  and  beauty, 
have  literary  quality;  but  tried  by  his  sub- 
ject matter,  he  is  more  a  philosopher,  a 
moralist,  a  theosophist,  than  a  poet  or  a  man 
62 


EMERSON  AND  HIS  JOURNALS 
of  letters  who  deals  with  this  human  life  as 
he  finds  it.  A  theosophist,  not  of  course  a 
theologian.  Emerson  is  the  most  religious  of 
thinkers,  but  by  1836,  when  his  first  book, 
"Nature,"  was  published,  he  had  thought 
himself  free  of  dogma  and  creed.  Not  the 
least  interest  of  the  journals  is  in  the  evi- 
dence they  give  of  the  process,  the  steps  of 
growth  by  which  he  won  to  his  perfected  sys- 
tem. As  early  as  1824  we  find  a  letter  to 
Plato,  remarkable  in  its  mature  gravity  for 
a  youth  of  twenty-one,  questioning  the  ex- 
clusive claim  of  the  Christian  Revelation: 
"Of  this  Revelation  I  am  the  ardent  friend. 
Of  the  Being  who  sent  it  I  am  the  child.  .  .  . 
But  I  confess  it  has  not  for  me  the  same  ex- 
clusive and  extraordinary  claims  it  has  for 
many.  I  hold  Reason  to  be  a  prior  Revela- 
tion. ...  I  need  not  inform  you  in  all  its 
depraved  details  of  the  theology  under  whose 
chains  Calvin  of  Geneva  bound  Europe  down ; 
but  this  opinion,  that  the  Revelation  had  be- 
come necessary  to  the  salvation  of  men 
through  some  conjunction  of  events  in 
heaven,  is  one  of  its  vagaries." 

Emerson  refused  to  affirm  personality  of 
God,  "because  it  is  too  little,  not  too  much." 
Here,  for  instance,  in  the  journal  for  Sun- 
day, May  22, 1836,  is  the  seed  of  the  passage 
in  the  "Divinity  School  Address"  which  com- 
plains that  "historical  Christianity  .  .  . 
63 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

dwells  with  noxious  exaggeration  about  the 
person  of  Jesus":  "The  talk  of  the  kitchen 
and  the  cottage  is  exclusively  occupied  with 
persons.  .  .  .  And  yet,  when  cultivated  men 
speak  of  God,  they  demand  a  biography  of 
him  as  steadily  as  the  kitchen  and  the  bar- 
room demand  personalities  of  men.  .  .  . 
Theism  must  be,  and  the  name  of  God  must 
be,  because  it  is  a  necessity  of  the  human 
mind  to  apprehend  the  relative  as  flowing 
from  the  absolute,  and  we  shall  always  give 
the  absolute  a  name." 

The  theosophist  whose  soul  is  in  direct 
contact  with  the  "Oversoul"  needs  no  "evi- 
dences of  Christianity,"  nor  any  revelation 
through  the  scripture  or  the  written  word. 
Revelation  is  to  him  something  more  imme- 
diate— a  doctrine,  said  Andrews  Norton, 
which  is  not  merely  a  heresy,  but  is  not  even 
an  intelligible  error.  Neither  does  the  mystic 
seek  proof  of  God's  existence  from  the  argu- 
ments of  natural  theology.  *'The  intellectual 
power  is  not  the  gift,  but  the  presence  of 
God.  Nor  do  we  reason  to  the  being  of  God, 
but  God  goes  with  us  into  Nature,  when  we 
go  or  think  at  all." 

The  popular  faith  does  not  warm  to  Emer- 
son's impersonal  deity.  "I  cannot  love  or 
worship  an  abstraction,"  it  says.  "I  must 
have  a  Father  to  believe  in  and  pray  to :  a 
Father  who  loves  and  watches  over  me.  As 
54 


EMERSON  AND  HIS  JOURNALS 

for  the  immortality  you  offer,  it  has  no 
promise  for  the  heart. 

My  servant  Death,  with  solving  rite. 
Pours  finite  into  infinite. 

I  do  not  know  what  it  means  to  be  absorbed 
into  the  absolute.  The  loss  of  conscious  per- 
sonal life  is  the  loss  of  all.  To  awake  into 
another  state  of  being  without  a  memory  of 
this,  is  such  a  loss ;  and  is,  besides,  incon- 
ceivable. I  want  to  be  re-united  to  my  friends. 
I  want  my  heaven  to  be  a  continuation  of  my 
earth.  And  hang  Brahma !" 

In  literature,  as  in  religion,  this  imper- 
sonality has  disconcerting  aspects  to  the  man 
who  dwells  in  the  world  of  the  senses  and  the 
understanding.  "Some  men,"  says  a  note  of 
1844,  "have  the  perception  of  difference  pre- 
dominant, and  are  conversant  with  surfaces 
and  trifles,  with  coats  and  coaches  and  faces 
and  cities;  these  are  the  men  of  talent.  And 
other  men  abide  by  the  perception  of  Iden- 
tity: these  are  the  Orientals,  the  philoso- 
phers, the  men  of  faith  and  divinity,  the  men 
of  genius." 

All  this  has  a  familiar  look  to  readers  who 
remember  the  chapter  on  Plato  in  "Repre- 
sentative Men,"  or  passages  like  the  follow- 
ing from  "The  Oversoul":  "In  youth  we  are 
mad  for  persons.  But  the  larger  experience 
of  man  discovers  the  identical  nature  appear- 
55 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

ing  through  them  all."  Now,  in  mundane 
letters  it  is  the  difference  that  counts,  the  piu 
and  not  the  tmo.  The  common  nature  may  be 
taken  for  granted.  In  drama  and  fiction,  par- 
ticularly, difference  is  life  and  identity  is 
death;  and  this  "tyrannizing  unity"  would 
cut  the  ground  from  under  them  both. 

This  philosophical  attitude  did  not  keep 
Emerson  from  having  a  sharp  eye  for  per- 
sonal traits.  His  sketch  of  Thoreau  in  "Ex- 
cursions" is  a  masterpiece;  and  so  is  the 
half-humorous  portrait  of  Socrates  in  "Rep- 
resentative Men" ;  and  both  these  are 
matched  by  the  keen  analysis  of  Daniel  Web- 
ster in  the  journals.  All  going  to  show  that 
this  transcendentalist  had  something  of  "the 
devouring  eye  and  the  portraying  hand" 
with  which  he  credits  Carlyle. 

As  in  religion  and  in  literature,  so  in  the 
common  human  relations,  this  impersonality 
gives  a  peculiar  twist  to  Emerson's  thought. 
The  coldness  of  his  essays  on  "Love"  and 
"Friendship"  has  been  often  pointed  out. 
His  love  is  the  high  Platonic  love.  He  is 
enamored  of  perfection,  and  individual  men 
and  women  are  only  broken  images  of  the 
absolute  good. 

Have  I  a  lover  who  is  noble  and  free? 
I  would  he  were  nobler  than  to  love  me. 

Alas !  nous  autres,  we  do  not  love  our  friends 
56 


EMERSON  AND  HIS  JOURNALS 

because  they  are  more  or  less  perfect  reflec- 
tions of  divinity.  We  love  them  in  spite  of 
their  faults :  almost  because  of  their  faults : 
at  least  we  love  their  faults  because  they  are 
theirs.  "You  are  in  love  with  certain  attri- 
butes," said  the  fair  blue-stocking  in  "Hy- 
perion" to  her  suitor.  "  'Madam,'  said  I, 
'damn  your  attributes  !'  " 

Another  puzzle  in  Emerson,  to  the  general 
reader,  is  the  centrality  of  his  thought.  I 
remember  a  remark  of  Professor  Thomas  A. 
Thacher,  upon  hearing  an  address  of  W.  T. 
Harris,  the  distinguished  Hegelian  and  edu- 
cationalist. He  said  that  Mr.  Harris  went  a 
long  way  back  for  a  jump.  So  Emerson 
draws  lines  of  relation  from  every  least  thing 
to  the  centre. 

A  subtle  chain  of  countless  rings 
The  next  unto  the  farthest  brings. 

He  never  lets  go  his  hold  upon  his  theosophy. 
All  his  wagons  are  hitched  to  stars :  himself 
from  God  he  cannot  free.  But  the  citizen  does 
not  like  to  be  always  reminded  of  God,  as  he 
goes  about  his  daily  affairs.  It  carries  a  dis- 
turbing suggestion  of  death  and  the  judg- 
ment and  eternity  and  the  other  world.  But, 
for  the  present,  this  comfortable  phenomenal 
world  of  time  and  space  is  good  enough  for 
him.  "So  a'  cried  out,  'God,  God,  God !'  three 
or  four  times.  Now  I,  to  comfort  him,  bid 
57 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
him   a'   should   not   think  of  God;   I   hoped 
there  was  no  need  to  trouble  himself  with  any 
such  thoughts  yet." 

Another  block  of  stumbling,  about  which 
much  has  been  written,  is  Emerson's  opti- 
mism, which  rests  upon  the  belief  that  evil  is 
negative,  merely  the  privation  or  shadow  of 
good,  without  real  existence.  It  was  the 
heresy  of  "Uriel"  that  there  was  nothing  in- 
herently and  permanently  bad:  no  line  of 
division  between  good  and  evil — "Line  in 
nature  is  not  found" ;  "Evil  will  bless  and  ice 
will  burn."  He  turned  away  resolutely  from 
the  contemplation  of  sin,  crime,  suffering : 
was  impatient  of  complaints  of  sickness,  of 
breakfast-table  talk  about  headaches  and  a 
bad  night's  sleep.  Doubtless  had  he  lived  to 
witness  the  Christian  Science  movement,  he 
would  have  taken  an  interest  in  the  under- 
lying doctrine,  while  repelled  by  the  element 
of  quackery  in  the  practice  and  preaching  of 
the  sect.  Hence  the  tragedy  of  life  is  ignored 
or  evaded  by  Emerson.  But  ici  has,  the  reality 
of  evil  is  not  abolished,  as  an  experience,  by 
calling  it  the  privation  of  good;  nor  will 
philosophy  cure  the  grief  of  a  wound.  We 
suffer  quite  as  acutely  as  we  enjoy.  We  find 
that  all  those  disagreeable  appearances — 
"swine,  spiders,  snakes,  pests,  mad-houses, 
prisons,  enemies," — which  he  assures  us  will 
disappear,  when  man  comes  fully  into  pos- 
58 


EMERSON  AND  HIS  JOURNALS 

session  of  his  kingdom,  do  not  disappear  but 
persist. 

The  dispute  between  optimism  and  pessi- 
mism rests,  in  the  long  run,  on  individual 
temperament  and  personal  experience,  and 
admits  of  no  secure  solution.  Imposing  sys- 
tems of  philosophy  have  been  erected  on  these 
opposing  views.  Leibnitz  proved  that  every- 
thing is  for  the  best  in  the  best  of  all  possible 
worlds.  Schopenhauer  demonstrated  the  fu- 
tility of  the  will  to  live;  and  showed  that  he 
who  increaseth  knowledge  increaseth  sorrow. 
Nor  does  it  avail  to  appeal  from  the  philos- 
ophers to  the  poets,  as  more  truly  express- 
ing the  general  sense  of  mankind;  and  to 
array  Byron,  Leopardi,  Shelley,  and  the 
book  of  "Lamentations,"  and  "The  City  of 
Dreadful  Night"  against  Goethe,  Words- 
worth, Browning,  and  others  of  the  hopeful 
wise.  The  question  cannot  be  decided  by  a 
majority  vote:  the  question  whether  life  is 
worth  living,  is  turned  aside  by  a  jest  about 
the  liver.  Meanwhile  men  give  it  practically 
an  affirmative  answer  by  continuing  to  live. 
Is  life  so  bad.?  Then  why  not  all  commit  sui- 
cide.'' Dryden  explains,  in  a  famous  tirade, 
that  we  do  not  kill  ourselves  because  we  are 
the  fools  of  hope : — 

When  I  consider  life,  'tis  all  a  cheat  .    .    . 

Shelley,    we    are    reminded,    calls    birth    an 
59 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
"eclipsing  curse" ;  and  Byron,  in  a  hackneyed 
stanza,  invites  us  to  count  over  the  joys  our 
life  has  seen  and  our  days  free  from  anguish, 
and  to  recognize  that  whatever  we  have  been, 
it  were  better  not  to  be  at  all. 

The  question  as  between  optimist  and 
pessimist  is  not  whether  evil  is  a  necessary 
foil  to  good,  as  darkness  is  to  light — a  disci- 
pline without  which  we  could  have  no  notion 
of  good, — but  whether  or  not  evil  predomi- 
nates in  the  universe.  Browning,  who  seems 
to  have  had  somewhat  of  a  contempt  for 
Bryon,  affirms: — 

.   .   .  There  's  a  simple  test 
Would  serve,  when  people  take  on  them  to 
weigh 
The  worth  of  poets.  "Who  was  better,  best, 
This,  that,  the  other  bard?"   .    .   . 

End  the  strife 
By  asking  "Which  one  led  a  happy  life?" 

This  may  answer  as  a  criterion  of  a  poet's 
"worth,"  that  is,  his  power  to  fortify,  to 
heal,  to  inspire;  but  it  can  hardly  be  ac- 
cepted, without  qualification,  as  a  test  of  in- 
tellectual power.  Goethe,  to  be  sure,  thought 
lightly  of  Byron  as  a  thinker.  But  Leopardi 
was  a  thinker  and  a  deep  and  exact  scholar. 
And  what  of  Shakespeare.?  What  of  the 
speeches  in  his  plays  which  convey  a  pro- 
found conviction  of  the  overbalance  of  misery 
60 


EMERSON  AND  HIS  JOURNALS 

in  human  life? — Hamlet's  soliloquy;  Mac- 
bcth's  "Out,  out,  brief  candle";  the  Duke's 
remonstrance  with  Claudio  in  "Measure  for 
Measure,"  persuading  him  that  there  was 
nothing  in  life  which  he  need  regret  to  lose; 
and  the  sad  reflections  of  the  King  in  "All's 
Well  that  Ends  Well"  upon  the  approach 
of  age, 

Let  me  not  live  after  my  flame  lacks  oil. 

It  is  the  habit  of  present-day  criticism  to 
regard  all  such  speeches  in  Shakespeare  as 
having  a  merely  dramatic  character,  true 
only  to  the  feeling  of  the  dramatis  persona 
who  speaks  them.  It  may  be  so;  but  often 
there  is  a  weight  of  thought  and  emotion  in 
these  and  the  like  passages  which  breaks 
through  the  platform  of  the  theatre  and 
gives  us  the  truth  as  Shakespeare  himself 
sees  it. 

Browning's  admirers  accord  him  great 
credit  for  being  happy.  And,  indeed,  he 
seems  to  take  credit  to  himself  for  that  same. 
Now  we  may  envy  a  man  for  being  happy, 
but  we  can  hardly  praise  him  for  it.  It  is  not 
a  thing  that  depends  on  his  will,  but  is  only 
his  good  fortune.  Let  it  be  admitted  that 
those  writers  do  us  the  greater  service  who 
emphasize  the  hopeful  view,  who  are  lucky 
enough  to  be  able  to  maintain  that  view. 
Still,  when  we  consider  what  this  world  is, 
61 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
the  placid  optimism  of  Emerson  and  the 
robustious  optimism  of  Browning  become 
sometimes  irritating;  and  we  feel  almost  like 
calling  for  a  new  "Candide"  and  exclaim  im- 
patiently, II  faut  cultiver  notre  jardin! 

Grow  old  along  with  me, 
The  best  is  yet  to  be. 

Oh,  no :  the  best  has  been :  youth  is  the  best. 
So  answers  general,  if  not  universal,  experi- 
ence. Old  age  doubtless  has  its  compensa- 
tions, and  Cicero  has  summed  them  up  in- 
geniously. But  the  "De  Senectute"  is,  at 
best,  a  whistling  to  keep  up  one's  courage. 

Strange  cozenage!  None  would  live  past  years 

again, 
Yet  all  hope  pleasure  from  what  still  remain, 
And  from  the  dregs  of  life  hope  to  receive 
What  the  first  sprightly  runnings  could  not  give. 
I'm  tired  of  waiting  for  this  chymic  gold, 
Which  fools  us  young  and  beggars  us  when  old. 

Upon  the  whole,  Matthew  Arnold  holds  the 
balance  more  evenly  than  either  optimist  or 
pessimist. 

.    .    .Life  still 
Yields  human  effort  scope. 
But  since  life  teems  with  ill, 
Nurse  no  extravagant  hope. 
Because  thou  must  not  dream, 
Thou  needs't  not  then  despair. 
62 


» 


EMERSON  AND  HIS  JOURNALS 

Spite  of  all  impersonality,  there  is  much 
interesting  personal  mention  in  these  jour- 
nals. Emerson's  kindly  regard  for  his  Con- 
cord friends  and  neighbors  is  quite  charming. 
He  had  need  of  much  patience  with  some  of 
them,  for  they  were  queer  as  Dick's  prover- 
bial hatband:  transcendentalists,  reformers, 
vegetarians,  communists — the  "cranks"  of 
our  contemporary  slang.  The  figure  which 
occurs  oftenest  in  these  memoranda  is — 
naturally — Mr.  A.  Bronson  Alcott.  Of  him 
Emerson  speaks  with  unfailing  reverence, 
mingled  with  a  kind  of  tender  desperation 
over  his  unworldliness  and  practical  helpless- 
ness. A  child  of  genius,  a  deep-thoughted 
seer,  a  pure  visionary,  living,  as  nearly  as 
such  a  thing  is  possible,  the  life  of  a  disem- 
bodied spirit.  If  earth  were  heaven,  Alcott's 
life  would  have  been  the  right  life.  "Great 
Looker!  Great  Expecter!"  says  Thoreau. 
"His  words  and  attitude  always  suppose  a 
better  state  of  things  than  other  men  are 
acquainted  with.  .  .  .  He  has  no  venture  in 
the  present." 

Emerson  is  forced  to  allow  that  Alcott 
was  no  writer:  talk  was  his  medium.  And 
even  from  his  talk  one  derived  few  definite 
ideas ;  but  its  steady,  melodious  flow  induced 
a  kind  of  hypnotic  condition,  in  which  one's 
own  mind  worked  with  unusual  energy, 
without  much  attending  to  what  was  being 
63 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

said.  "Alcott  is  like  a  slate-pencil  which  has 
a  sponge  tied  to  the  other  end,  and,  as  the 
point  of  the  pencil  draws  lines,  the  sponge 
follows  as  fast,  and  erases  them.  He  talks 
high  and  wide,  and  expresses  himself  very 
happily,  and  forgets  all  he  has  said.  If  a 
skilful  operator  could  introduce  a  lancet  and 
sever  the  sponge,  Alcott  would  be  the  prince 
of  writers."  "I  used  to  tell  him  that  he  had 
no  senses.  .  .  .  We  had  a  good  proof  of  it 
this  morning.  He  wanted  to  know  'why  the 
boys  waded  in  the  water  after  pond  lilies?' 
Why,  because  they  will  sell  in  town  for  a  cent 
apiece  and  every  man  and  child  likes  to  carry 
one  to  church  for  a  cologne  bottle.  'What!' 
said  he,  'have  they  a  perfume.''  I  did  not 
know  it.'  " 

And  Ellery  Channing,  who  had  in  him 
brave,  translunary  things,  as  Hawthorne 
testifies  no  less  than  Emerson ;  as  his  own 
poems  do  partly  testify — those  poems  which 
were  so  savagely  cut  up  by  Edgar  Poe. 
Channing,  too,  was  no  writer,  no  artist.  His 
poetry  was  freakish,  wilfully  imperfect,  not 
seldom  affected,  sometimes  downright  silly — 
"shamefully  indolent  and  slovenly,"  are 
Emerson's  words  concerning  it. 

Margaret  Fuller,  too,  fervid,  high  aspir- 
ing, dominating  soul,  and  brilliant  talker: 
("such  a  determination  to  eat  this  huge  uni- 
verse," Carlyle's  comment  upon  her;  dis- 
64 


EMERSON  AND  HIS  JOURNALS 
agi'eeable,  conceited  woman,  Lowell's  and 
Hawthorne's  verdict).  Margaret,  too,  was 
an  "illuminator  but  no  writer."  Miss  Pea- 
body  was  proposing  to  collect  anecdotes  of 
Margaret's  youth.  But  Emerson  throws  cold 
water  on  the  project:  "Now,  unhappily, 
Margaret's  writing  does  not  justify  any 
such  research.  All  that  can  be  said  is  that 
she  represents  an  interesting  hour  and  group 
in  American  cultivation;  then  that  she  was 
herself  a  fine,  generous,  inspiring,  vinous, 
eloquent  talker,  who  did  not  outlive  her  in- 
fluence." 

This  is  sound  criticism.  None  of  these 
people  could  write.  Thoreau  and  Hawthorne 
and  Emerson,  himself,  were  accomplished 
writers,  and  are  American  classics.  But  the 
collected  works  of  Margaret  Fuller,  in  the 
six-volume  "Tribune  Memorial  Edition"  are 
disappointing.  They  do  not  interest,  are 
to-day  virtually  unreadable.  A  few  of 
Channing's  most  happily  inspired  and  least 
capriciously  expressed  verses  find  lodgment 
in  the  anthologies.  As  for  Alcott,  he  had  no 
technique  at  all.  For  its  local  interest  I  once 
read  his  poem  "New  Connecticut,"  which 
recounts  his  early  life  in  the  little  old  hilltop 
village  of  Wolcott  (Alcott  of  Wolcott),  and 
as  a  Yankee  pedlar  in  the  South.  It  is  of  a 
winning  innocence,  a  more  than  Words- 
worthian  simplicity.  I  read  it  with  pleasure, 
65 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

as  the  revelation  of  a  singularly  pure  and 
disinterested  character.  As  a  literary  com- 
position, it  is  about  on  the  level  of  Mother 
Goose.  Here  is  one  more  extract  from  the 
journals,  germane  to  the  matter: 

"In  July  [1852]  Mr.  Alcott  went  to  Con- 
necticut to  his  native  town  of  Wolcott; 
found  his  father's  farm  in  possession  of  a 
stranger;  found  many  of  his  cousins  still 
poor  farmers  in  the  town;  the  town  itself 
unchanged  since  his  childhood,  whilst  all  the 
country  round  has  been  changed  by  manu- 
factures and  railroads.  Wolcott,  which  is  a 
mountain,  remains  as  it  was,  or  with  a  still 
less  population  (ten  thousand  dollars,  he  said, 
would  buy  the  whole  town,  and  all  the  men  in 
it)  and  now  tributary  entirely  to  the  neigh- 
boring town  of  Waterbury,  which  is  a  thriv- 
ing factory  village.  Alcott  went  about  and  in- 
vited all  the  people,  his  relatives  and  friends, 
to  meet  him  at  five  o'clock  at  the  school- 
house,  where  he  had  once  learned,  on  Sunday 
evening.  Thither  they  all  came,  and  he  sat  at 
the  desk  and  gave  them  the  story  of  his  life. 
Some  of  the  audience  went  away  discon- 
tented, because  they  had  not  heard  a  sermon, 
as  they  hoped." 

Some    sixty    years    after   this    entry    was 

made,  I  undertook  a  literary  pilgrimage  to 

Wolcott    in    company    with    a    friend.    We 

crossed  the  mountain  from  Plantsville  and, 

66 


EMERSON  AND  HIS  JOURNALS 
on  the  outskirts  of  the  village,  took  dinner 
at  a  farmhouse,  one  wing  of  which  was  the 
little  Episcopal  chapel  in  which  the  Alcott 
family  had  worshipped  about  1815.  It  had 
been  moved  over,  I  believe,  from  the  centre. 
The  centre  itself  was  a  small  green,  bordered 
by  some  dozen  houses,  with  the  meeting- 
house and  horse  sheds,  on  an  airy  summit 
overlooking  a  vast  open  prospect  of  farms 
and  woods,  falling  a.W8ij  to  the  Naugatuck. 
We  inquired  at  several  of  the  houses,  and  of 
the  few  human  beings  met  on  the  road,  where 
was  the  birthplace  of  A.  Bronson  Alcott? 
In  vain:  none  had  ever  heard  of  him,  nor  of 
an  Alcott  family  once  resident  in  the  town: 
not  even  of  Louisa  Alcott,  whose  "Little 
Women"  still  sells  its  annual  thousands,  and 
a  dramatized  version  of  which  was  even  then 
playing  in  New  York  to  crowded  houses.  The 
prophet  and  his  country !  We  finally  heard 
rumors  of  a  certain  Spindle  Hill,  which  was 
vaguely  connected  with  traditions  of  the  Al- 
cott name.  But  it  was  getting  late,  and  we 
availed  ourselves  of  a  passing  motor  car 
which  set  us  some  miles  on  our  way  towards 
the  Waterbury  trolley  line.  This  baffled  act 
of  homage  has  seemed  to  me,  in  a  way,  sym- 
bolical, and  I  have  never  renewed  it. 

It  was  Emerson's  belief  that  the  faintest 
promptings  of  the  spirit  are  also,  in  the  end, 
the  practical  rules  of  conduct.  A  paragraph 
67 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
written  in  1837  has  a  startling  application 
to  the  present  state  of  affairs  in  Europe:  "I 
think  the  principles  of  the  Peace  party  sub- 
lime. .  ,  .  If  a  nation  of  men  is  exalted  to 
that  height  of  morals  as  to  refuse  to  fight 
and  choose  rather  to  suffer  loss  of  goods  and 
loss  of  life  than  to  use  violence,  they  must  be 
not  helpless,  but  most  effective  and  great 
men :  they  would  overawe  their  invader  and 
make  him  ridiculous :  they  would  communi- 
cate the  contagion  of  their  virtue  and  inocu- 
late all  mankind." 

Is  this  transcendental  politics?  Does  it 
belong  to  what  Mr.  Roosevelt  calls,  with  apt 
alliteration,  the  "realm  of  shams  and  shad- 
ows"? It  is,  at  all  events,  applied  Chris- 
tianity. It  is  the  principle  of  the  Society  of 
Friends;  and  of  Count  Tolstoy,  who  of  all 
recent  great  writers  is  the  most  consistent 
preacher  of  Christ's  gospel. 


68 


THE  ART  OF  LETTER  WRITING 

THIS  lecture  was  founded  by  Mr.  George 
F.  Dominick,  of  the  Class  of  1894,  in 
memory  of  Daniel  S.  Lamont,  private  secre- 
tary to  President  Cleveland,  and  afterwards 
Secretary  of  War,  during  Mr.  Cleveland's 
second  term  of  office.  Mr.  Dominick  had  a 
high  regard  for  Lamont's  skill  as  a  letter 
writer  and  in  the  composition  of  messages, 
despatches,  and  reports.  It  was  his  wish,  not 
only  to  perpetuate  the  memory  of  his  friend 
and  to  associate  it  with  his  own  Alma  Mater, 
but  to  give  his  memorial  a  shape  which 
should  mark  his  sense  of  the  importance  of 
the  art  of  letter  writing. 

Mr.  Dominick  thought  that  Lamont  was 
particularly  happy  in  turning  a  phrase  and 
that  many  of  the  expressions  which  passed 
current  in  Cleveland's  two  presidencies  were 
really  of  his  secretary's  coinage.  I  don't  sup- 
pose that  we  are  to  transfer  such  locutions 
as  "innocuous  desuetude"  and  "pernicious 
activity"  from  the  President  to  his  secretary. 
They  bear  the  stamp  of  their  authorship.  I 
fancy  that  Mr.  Lamont's  good  phrases  took 
less  room  to  turn  in. 

69 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
But  however  this  may  be,  the  founder  of 
this  lecture  is  certainly  right  in  his  regard 
for  the  art  of  letter  writing.  It  is  an  im- 
portant asset  in  any  man's  equipment,  and  I 
have  heard  it  said  that  the  test  of  education 
is  the  ability  to  write  a  good  letter.  Mer- 
chants, manufacturers,  and  business  men 
generally,  in  advertising  for  clerks  or  assist- 
ants, are  apt  to  judge  of  the  fitness  of  appli- 
cants for  positions  by  the  kind  of  letters 
that  they  write.  If  these  are  illegible,  ill- 
spelled,  badly  punctuated  and  paragraphed, 
ungrammatical,  confused,  repetitious,  igno- 
rantly  or  illiterately  expressed,  they  are 
usually  fatal  to  their  writers'  hopes  of  a 
place.  This  is  not  quite  fair,  for  there  is 
many  a  shrewd  man  of  business  who  can't 
write  a  good  letter.  But  surely  a  college 
graduate  may  be  justly  expected  to  write 
correct  English;  and  he  is  likely  to  be  more 
often  called  on  to  use  it  in  letters  than  in  any 
other  form  of  written  composition.  "The 
writing  of  letters,"  says  John  Locke,  "has  so 
much  to  do  in  all  the  occurrences  of  human 
life,  that  no  gentleman  can  avoid  showing 
himself  in  this  kind  of  writing  .  .  .  which 
always  lays  him  open  to  a  severer  examina- 
tion of  his  breeding,  sense  and  abilities  than 
oral  discourses  whose  transient  faults  .  .  . 
more  easily  escape  observation  and  censure." 
Litera  scripta  manet.  Who  was  the  prudent 
70 


THE  ART  OF  LETTER  WRITING 

lady  in  one  of  Rhoda  Broughton's  novels  who 
cautioned  her  friend:  "My  dear,  never  write 
a  letter;  there's  not  a  scrap  of  my  hand- 
writing in  Europe"?  Rightly  or  wrongly,  we 
are  quick  to  draw  conclusions  as  to  a  per- 
son's social  antecedents  from  his  pronuncia- 
tion and  from  his  letters. 

In  the  familiar  epistle,  as  in  other  forms 
of  social  intercourse,  nothing  can  quite  take 
the  place  of  old  use  and  wont.  Still  the 
proper  forms  may  be  learned  from  the  rhet- 
oric books,  just  as  the  young  man  whose 
education  has  been  neglected  may  learn  from 
the  standard  manuals  of  politeness,  such  as 
"Etiquette  and  Eloquence  or  The  Perfect 
Gentleman,"  what  the  right  hour  is  for 
making  an  evening  call,  and  on  what  occa- 
sions the  Tuxedo  jacket  is  the  correct  thing. 
The  rhetorics  give  directions  how  to  address 
a  letter,  to  begin  it,  to  close  it,  and  where  to 
put  the  postage  stamp ;  directions  as  to  the 
date,  the  salutation,  the  signature,  and  cau- 
tions not  to  write  "yours  respectively"  in- 
stead of  "yours  respectfully."  These  are 
useful,  but  beyond  these  the  rhetoric  books 
cannot  go,  save  in  the  way  of  general  advice. 
The  model  letters  in  "The  Complete  Letter 
Writer"  are  dismal  things.  "Ideas,"  says  one 
of  these  textbook  authorities,  "ideas  should 
be  collected  by  the  card  system."  Now  I 
rather  think  that  ideas  should  not  be  col- 
71 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

lected  by  the  card  system,  or  by  any  other 
system.  The  charm  of  a  personal  letter  is 
its  spontaneity.  Any  suspicion  that  the  ideas 
in  it  have  been  "collected"  is  deadly.  To  do 
the  rhetoric  books  justice,  the  best  of  them 
warn  against  formality  in  all  except  the 
necessarily  formal  portions  of  the  letter.  A 
letter,  like  an  epic  poem,  should  begin  in 
medias  res.  Ancient  targets  for  jest  are 
the  opening  formulae  in  servant  girls'  corre- 
spondence. "I  take  my  pen  in  hand  to  inform 
you  that  I  am  well  and  hope  you  are  enjoying 
the  same  great  blessing;"  or  the  sentence 
with  which  our  childish  communications  used 
to  start  out:  "Dear  Champ, — As  I  have 
nothing  else  to  do  I  thought  I  would  write 
you  a  letter" — matter  of  excusation  and 
apology  which  Bacon  instructs  us  to  avoid. 

The  little  boy  whom  Dr.  John  Brown  tells 
about  was  unconsciously  obeying  Aristotle's 
rule.  Without  permission  he  had  taken  his 
brother's  gun  and  broken  it ;  and  after  hiding 
himself  all  day,  he  opened  written  communi- 
cations with  his  stern  elder;  a  blotted  and 
tear-spotted  scrawl  beginning:  "O  Jamie, 
your  gun  is  broke  and  my  heart  is  broke." 

But  no  general  rules  for  letter  writing  give 
much  help ;  nor  for  that  matter,  do  general 
rules  for  any  kind  of  writing,  A  little  prac- 
tice in  the  concrete,  under  intelligent  guid- 
ance, is  worth  any  number  of  rhetorical 
72 


THE  ART  OF  LETTER  WRITING 

platitudes.  But  such  as  it  is,  the  rule  for  a 
business  letter  is  just  the  reverse  of  that  for 
a  friendly  letter.  It  should  be  as  brief  as  is 
consistent  with  clearness,  for  your  corre- 
spondent is  a  business  man,  whose  time  is  his 
money.  It  should  above  all  things,  however, 
be  explicit ;  and  in  striving  to  avoid  surplus- 
age should  omit  nothing  that  is  necessary. 
Ambiguity  is  here  the  unpardonable  sin  and 
has  occasioned  thousands  of  law  suits,  involv- 
ing millions  of  dollars.  It  should  be  severely 
impersonal.  Pleasantries,  sentiments,  digres- 
sions and  the  like  are  impertinences  in  a 
business  letter,  like  the  familiarity  of  an  un- 
introduced  stranger.  I  knew  a  lawyer — and  a 
good  lawyer — who  suffered  professionally, 
because  he  would  get  himself  into  his  business 
letters.  He  made  jokes;  he  made  quotations; 
sometimes  French  quotations  which  his  corre- 
spondents could  not  translate;  he  expressed 
opinions  and  vented  emotions  on  subjects 
only  incidentally  connected  with  the  matter 
in  hand,  which  he  embroidered  with  wit  and 
fancy ;  and  he  was  a  long  time  coming  to  the 
point.  Now  men  of  business  may  trifle  about 
all  other  serious  aspects  of  life  or  death,  but 
when  it  concerns  the  making  of  money,  they 
are  in  deadly  earnest;  so  that  my  friend's 
frivolous  treatment  of  those  interests  seemed 
to  them  little  less  than  sacrilege. 

Viewed    then    as    one    of    the    commonest 
73 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

means  of  communication  between  man  and 
man,  it  is  well  to  be  able  to  write  a  good 
letter;  just  as  it  is  well  to  know  how  to  tie 
a  bowknot,  cast  an  account,  carve  a  joint, 
shave  oneself,  or  meet  any  other  of  the 
ordinary  occasions  of  life.  But  tons  of  letters 
are  emptied  from  the  mail  bags  every  day, 
and  burned,  which  serve  no  other  than  a 
momentary  end.  The  art  of  composing  letters 
worth  keeping  and  printing  is  a  part  of  the 
art  literary.  The  word  letters  and  the  word 
literature  are  indeed  used  interchangeably; 
we  speak  of  a  man  of  letters,  polite  letters, 
the  belles  lettres,  literae  humaniores.  How 
far  are  such  expressions  justified?  Mani- 
festly a  letter,  or  a  collection  of  letters,  has 
not  the  structural  unity  and  the  deliberate 
artistic  appeal  of  the  higher  forms  of  litera- 
ture. It  is  not  like  an  epic  poem,  a  play,  a 
novel  or  an  ode.  It  has  an  art  of  its  own,  but 
an  art  of  a  particular  kind,  the  secret  of 
which  is  artlessness.  It  is  not  addressed  to 
the  public  but  to  an  individual  and  should 
betray  no  consciousness  of  any  third  party. 
It  belongs,  therefore,  in  the  class  with  jour- 
nals and  table  talk  and,  above  all,  auto- 
biography, of  which  it  constitutes  the  verj' 
best  material.  A  book  is  written  for  every- 
body, a  diary  for  oneself,  a  letter  for  one's 
friend.  While  a  letter,  therefore,  cannot  quite 
claim  a  standing  among  the  works  of  the 
74 


THE  ART  OF  LETTER  WRITING 
creative  imagination,  yet  it  comes  so  freshly 
out  of  life  and  is  so  true  in  self-expression 
that,  in  some  moods,  we  prefer  it  to  more 
artificial  or  more  objective  kinds  of  litera- 
ture; just  as  the  advertisements  in  an  old 
newspaper  or  magazine  often  have  a  greater 
veracity  and  freshness  as  dealing  with  the 
homely,  actual  needs  and  concerns  of  the 
time,  than  the  stories,  poems,  and  editorials 
whose  fashion  has  faded. 

I  am  speaking  now  of  a  genuine  letter,  "a 
link  between  two  personalities,"  as  it  has  been 
defined.  There  are  two  varieties  of  letters 
which  are  not  genuine.  The  first  of  these  is 
the  open  letter,  the  letter  to  the  editor,  letter 
to  a  noble  lord,  etc.  This  is  really  addressed 
to  the  public  through  the  medium  of  a  more 
or  less  imaginary  correspondent.  The  Eng- 
lishman's habit  of  writing  to  the  London 
Times  on  all  occasions  is  proverbial.  Pro- 
fessor Goldwin  Smith  is  a  living  example  of 
the  practice,  transplanted  to  the  field  of 
the  American  newspaper  press.  But  private 
letters  written  with  an  eye  to  publication  are 
spoiled  in  the  act.  To  be  natural  they  should 
not  mean  to  be  overheard.  If  afterwards,  by 
reason  of  the  eminence  of  the  writer,  or  of 
some  quality  in  the  letters  themselves,  they 
get  into  print,  let  it  be  by  accident  and  not 
from  forethought.  Why  is  it,  then,  that  the 
best  printed  letters,  such  as  Gray's,  Wal- 
76 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

pole's,  Cowper's,  Fitzgerald's,  written  with 
all  the  ease  and  intimacy  of  confidential 
intercourse — "written  from  one  man  and  to 
one  man" — are  found  to  be  composed  in  such 
perfect  English,  with  such  high  finish,  filled 
with  matter  usually  reserved  by  professional 
authors  for  their  essays  or  descriptive 
sketches ;  in  fine,  to  be  so  literary  ?  The  rea- 
son I  take  to  be  partly  in  the  mutual  in- 
tellectual sympathy  between  writer  and 
correspondent;  and  partly  in  the  conscien- 
tious literary  habit  of  the  letter  writer. 
Hawthorne's  "Note  Books,"  intended  only 
for  his  own  eye,  are  written  with  almost  as 
much  care  as  the  romances  and  tales  into 
which  many  pages  of  them  were  decanted 
with  little  alteration. 

Besides  the  open  letter,  there  is  another 
variety  which  is  not  a  real  letter:  I  mean 
the  letter  of  fiction.  This  has  been  a  favorite 
method  of  telling  a  story.  You  know  that  all 
the  novels  of  our  first  novelist,  Richardson, 
are  in  this  form:  "Pamela,"  "Clarissa  Har- 
lowe,"  "Sir  Charles  Grandison" ;  and  some  of 
the  most  successful  American  short  stories  of 
recent  years  have  been  written  in  letters :  Mr. 
James's  "A  Bundle  of  Letters,"  Mr.  Al- 
drich's  "Margery  Daw,"  Mr.  Bishop's  "Writ- 
ing to  Rosina"  and  many  others.  This  is  a 
subjective  method  of  narration  and  requires 
a  delicate  art  in  differentiating  the  epistolary 
76 


THE  ART  OF  LETTER  WRITING 
style  of  a  number  of  correspondents ;  though 
not  more,  perhaps,  than  in  the  management 
of  dialogue  in  an  ordinary  novel  or  play.  The 
plan  has  certain  advantages  and  in  Richard- 
son's case  was  perhaps  the  most  effective 
that  he  could  have  hit  upon,  i.e.,  the  best 
adapted  to  the  turn  of  his  genius  and  the 
nature  of  his  fiction.  (Richardson  began  by 
writing  letters  for  young  people.)  Fitz- 
gerald, the  translator  of  Omar  Khayyam,  and 
himself  one  of  our  best  letter  writers,  pre- 
ferred Richardson  to  Fielding,  as  did  also 
Dr.  Johnson.  For  myself,  I  will  acknowledge 
that,  while  I  enjoy  a  characteristic  intro- 
duced letter  here  and  there  in  a  novel,  as 
Thackeray,  e.g.,  manages  the  thing;  or  even 
a  short  story  in  this  form;  yet  a  long  novel 
written  throughout  in  letters  I  find  tedious, 
and  Richardson's  interminable  fictions,  in 
particular,  perfectly  unendurable. 

The  epistolary  form  is  conveniently  elastic 
and  not  only  lends  itself  easily  to  the  pur- 
poses of  fiction,  but  is  a  ready  vehicle  of  re- 
flection, humor,  sentiment,  satire,  and  de- 
scription. Such  recent  examples  as  "The 
Upton  Letters,"  "The  Love  Letters  of  a 
Worldly  Woman,"  and  Andrew  Lang's 
"Letters  to  Dead  Authors"  are  illustrations, 
holding  in  solution  many  of  the  elements  of 
the  essay,  the  diary,  the  character  sketch, 
and  the  parody. 

77 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

But  from  these  fictitious  uses  of  the  form 
let  us  return  to  the  consideration  of  the  real 
letter,  the  letter  written  by  one  man  to 
another  for  his  private  perusal,  but  which 
from  some  superiority  to  the  temporary  oc- 
casion, has  become  literature.  The  theory 
of  letter  writing  has  been  well  given  by  Mr. 
J.  C.  Bailey  in  his  "Studies  in  Some  Famous 
Letters."  "What  is  a  letter.''  It  is  written 
talk,  with  something,  but  not  all,  of  the 
easiness  of  talking;  and  something,  but  not 
all,  of  the  formality  of  writing.  It  is  at  once 
spontaneous  and  deliberate,  a  thing  of  art 
and  a  thing  of  amusement,  the  idle  occupa- 
tion of  an  hour  and  the  sure  index  of  a 
character." 

It  is  often  said  that  letter  writing  is  a  lost 
art.  It  is  an  art  of  leisure  and  these  are  pro- 
verbially the  days  of  hurry.  The  modern 
spirit  is  expressed  by  the  telegraphic  des- 
patch, the  telephone  message,  and  the  pic- 
ture postal  card.  It  is  much  if  we  manage  an 
answer  to  an  R.S.V.P.  note  of  invitation.  We 
have  lost  the  habit  of  those  old-fashioned 
correspondents  whose  "friendship  covered 
reams."  How  wonderful  now  seem  the  volumi- 
nous outpourings  of  Mme.  de  Sevigne  to  her 
daughter!  How  did  she  get  time  to  do  it  all.'' 
It  has  been  shown  by  actual  calculation  that 
the  time  occupied  by  Clarissa  Harlowe  in 
writing  her  letters  would  have  left  no  room 
78 


THE  ART  OF  LETTER  WRITING 
for  the  happening  of  the  events  which  her 
letters  record.  She  could  not  have  been  doing 
and  suffering  what  she  did  and  suffered  and 
yet  have  had  the  leisure  to  write  it  up.  And 
not  only  want  of  time,  but  an  increasing 
reticence  constrains  our  pens  within  nar- 
rower limits.  Members  of  families  now  ex- 
change letters  merely  to  give  news,  ask  ques- 
tions, keep  in  touch  with  one  another :  not  to 
confide  feelings  or  impart  experiences.  A  man 
is  ashamed  to  sit  down  and  deliberately  pour 
out  thoughts,  sentiments,  and  descriptions, 
even  to  his  intimates.  "I  suppose,"  wrote 
Fitzgerald,  "that  people  who  are  engaged  in 
serious  ways  of  life,  and  are  of  well  filled 
minds,  don't  think  much  about  the  inter- 
change of  letters  with  any  anxiety ;  but  I  am 
an  idle  fellow,  of  a  very  ladylike  turn  of 
sentiment,  and  my  friendships  are  more  like 
loves,  I  think."  It  is  from  men  of  letters  that 
the  best  letters  are  to  be  expected,  but  they 
are  busy  magazining,  overwork  their  pens 
for  the  public,  and  are  consequently  impa- 
tient of  the  burden  of  private  correspond- 
ence. "Private  letters,"  wrote  Willis  to  Poe, 
"are  the  last  ounce  that  breaks  the  camel's 
back  of  a  literary  man."  To  ask  him  to  write 
a  letter  after  his  day's  work,  said  Willis,  was 
like  asking  a  penny  postman  to  take  a  walk 
in  the  evening  for  the  pleasure  of  it.  And  in 
a  letter  to  a  friend  he  excused  his  brevity  on 
79 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

the  plea  that  he  was  paid  a  guinea  a  page  for 
everything  he  wrote,  and  could  not  afford  to 
waste  manuscript.  "I  do  not  write  letters  to 
anybody,"  wrote  Lowell  in  1842  to  his  friend 
Dr.  G.  B.  Loring.  "The  longer  I  live  the 
more  irksome  does  letter  writing  become  to 
me.  When  we  are  young  we  need  such  a  vent 
for  our  feelings.  .  .  .  But  as  we  grow  older 
and  find  more  ease  of  expression,  especially 
if  it  be  in  a  way  by  which  we  can  reach  the 
general  ear  and  heart,  these  private  utter- 
ances become  less  and  less  needful  to  us."  In 
spite  of  this  protest,  when  Mr.  Charles  Eliot 
Norton  came  to  print  Lowell's  letters,  he 
found  enough  of  them  to  fill  two  volumes  of 
four  hundred  pages  each.  For  after  all,  and 
with  some  exceptions,  it  is  among  the  class 
of  professional  writers  that  we  find  the  best 
letter  writers:  Gray,  Cowper,  Byron,  Lamb, 
Fitzgerald,  Lowell  himself.  They  do  it  out  of 
hours,  "on  the  side"  and,  as  in  Lowell's  case, 
under  protest;  but  the  habit  of  literary  ex- 
pression is  strong  in  them ;  they  like  to  prac- 
tise their  pens ;  they  begin  a  note  to  a  friend 
and  before  they  know  it  they  have  made  a 
piece  of  literature,  bound  some  day  to  get 
into  print  with  others  of  the  same  kind. 

And    here    comes    a    curious    speculation. 

Where  do  all  the  letters  come  from  that  go 

into    these    collections.''    Do    you    keep    the 

letters   that   you   receive.''   I   confess   that   I 

80 


THE  ART  OF  LETTER  WRITING 

burn  most  of  mine  as  soon  as  I  have  read 
them.  Still  more,  do  you  keep  copies  of  the 
letters  that  you  send?  I  don't  mean  type- 
written business  letters  which  you  put  damp 
into  the  patent-press-letter-copier  to  take 
off  an  impression  to  file  away  for  reference, 
but  friendly  letters?  The  typewriting  ma- 
chine, by  the  way,  is  perhaps  partly  respon- 
sible for  the  decay  of  the  letter  writing  art. 
It  is  hard  to  imagine  Charles  Lamb,  or  any 
other  master  of  this  most  personal  and  in- 
timate little  art,  who  would  not  be  discon- 
certed by  this  mechanical  interposition  be- 
tween his  thought  and  his  page.  The  last 
generation  must  certainly  have  hoarded  their 
letters  more  carefully  than  ours.  You  come 
across  trunks  full  of  them,  desks  full  of  them 
in  the  garrets  of  old  houses:  yellow  bundles 
tied  with  tape,  faded  ink,  stains  of  pressed 
violets,  dust  and  musty  odors,  old  mirth,  old 
sorrows,  old  loves.  Hackneyed  themes  of 
pathos,  I  mention  them  again,  not  to  drop 
the  tear  of  sensibility  on  their  already  well- 
moistened  paper,  but  to  enquire:  Are  these, 
and  such  as  these,  the  sources  of  those  many 
printed  volumes  "Letters  of  Blank,"  "Diary 
and  Correspondence  of  So  and  So,"  ranging 
in  date  over  periods  of  fifty  or  sixty  years, 
and  beginning  sometimes  in  the  boyhood  of 
the  writer,  when  the  correspondent  who  pre- 
served the  letter  could  not  possibly  have 
81 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

foreseen    Blank's    future    greatness    and    the 
value  of  his  autograph? 

Women  are  proverbially  good  letter 
writers.  The  letters  of  Mme.  de  Sevigne  to 
her  daughter  are  masterpieces  of  their  kind. 
Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu's  are  among 
the  best  of  English  letters;  and  Fitzgerald 
somewhat  whimsically  mentions  the  corre- 
spondence of  a  certain  Mrs.  French  as  worthy 
to  rank  with  Horace  Walpole's.  "Would  you 
desire  at  this  day,"  says  De  Quincey,  "to 
read  our  noble  language  in  its  native  beauty 
.  .  .  steal  the  mail  bags  and  break  open  all 
the  letters  in  female  handwriting.  Three  out 
of  four  will  have  been  written  by  that  class 
of  women  who  have  the  most  leisure  and  the 
most  interest  in  a  correspondence  by  the 
post,"  i.e.,  "unmarried  women  above  twenty- 
five."  De  Quincey  adds  that  "if  required  to 
come  forward  in  some  public  character" 
these  same  ladies  "might  write  ill  and  affect- 
edly. .  .  .  But  in  their  letters  they  write 
under  the  benefit  of  their  natural  advantages 
.  .  .  sustained  by  some  deep  sympathy  be- 
tween themselves  and  their  correspondents." 
"Authors  can't  write  letters,"  says  Lowell  in 
a  letter  to  Miss  Norton.  "At  best  they 
squeeze  out  an  essay  now  and  then,  burying 
every  natural  sprout  in  a  dry  and  dreary 
sand  flood,  as  unlike  as  possible  to  those 
delightful  freshets  with  which  your  heart 
82 


THE  ART  OF  LETTER  WRITING 
overflows  the  paper.  They  are  thinking  of 
their  punctuation,  of  crossing  their  t's  and 
dotting  their  i's,  and  cannot  forget  them- 
selves in  their  correspondent,  which  I  take  to 
be  the  true  recipe  for  a  letter."  And  writing 
to  another  correspondent,  C.  E.  Norton,  he 
says :  "The  habits  of  authorship  are  fatal  to 
the  careless  unconsciousness  that  is  the  life 
of  a  letter.  .  .  .  But  worse  than  all  is  that 
lack  of  interest  in  one's  self  that  comes  of 
drudgery — for  I  hold  that  a  letter  which  is 
not  mainly  about  the  writer  of  it  lacks  the 
prime  flavor."  This  is  slightly  paradoxical, 
for,  I  repeat,  the  best  published  letters  are 
commonly  the  work  of  professional  literati. 
Byron's  letters  have  been  preferred  by  some 
readers  to  his  poetry,  such  are  their  head- 
long vigor,  dash,  verve,  spontaneity,  the 
completeness  of  their  self-expression.  Keats 
was  par  excellence  the  literary  artist;  yet 
nothing  can  exceed  the  artlessness,  simplic- 
ity, and  sympathetic  self-forgetfulness  with 
which  he  writes  to  his  little  sister.  But  it  is 
easy  to  see  what  Lowell  means.  Charles 
Lamb's  letters,  e.g.,  though  in  many  respects 
charming,  are  a  trifle  too  composed.  They 
have  that  trick  of  quaintness  which  runs 
through  the  "Essays  of  Elia,"  but  which 
gives  an  air  of  artificiality  to  a  private 
letter.  He  is  practising  a  literary  habit 
rather  than  thinking  of  his  correspondent. 
83 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
In  this  most  intimate,  personal,  and  mutual 
of  arts,  the  writer  should  write  to  his  friend 
what  will  interest  him  as  well  as  himself.  He 
should  not  dwell  on  hobbies  of  his  own ;  nor 
describe  his  own  experiences  at  too  great 
length.  It  is  all  right  to  amuse  his  friend,  but 
not  to  air  his  own  cleverness.  Lowell's  letters 
are  delightful,  and,  by  and  large,  I  would 
place  them  second  to  none  in  the  language. 
But  they  are  sometimes  too  literary  and  have 
the  faults  of  his  prose  writing  in  general.  Wit 
was  always  his  temptation,  misleading  him 
now  and  then  into  a  kind  of  Yankee  smart- 
ness and  a  disposition  to  show  oif.  His  tem- 
perament was  buoyant,  impulsive ;  there  was 
to  the  last  a  good  deal  of  the  boy  about 
Lowell.  Letter  writing  is  a  friendly  art,  and 
Lowell's  warm  expressions  of  love  for  his 
friends  are  most  genuine.  His  epistolary 
style,  like  his  essay  style,  is  lavish  and  sel- 
dom chastened  or  toned  down  to  the  exquisite 
simplicity  which  distinguishes  the  best  letters 
of  Gray  and  Cowper.  And  so  Lowell  is  always 
getting  in  his  own  way,  tripping  himself  up 
over  his  superabundance  of  matter.  Still,  as 
a  whole,  I  know  no  collected  letters  richer  in 
thought,  humor,  and  sentiment.  And  one  may 
trace  in  them,  read  consecutively,  the  grad- 
ual ripening  and  refining  of  a  highly  gifted 
mind  and  a  nature  which  had  at  once  nobility 
and  charm  of  thought. 
84 


THE  ART  OF  LETTER  WRITING 
Lowell  speaks  admiringly  of  Emerson's 
"gracious  impersonality."  Now  imperson- 
ality is  the  last  thing  we  expect  of  a  letter 
writer.  Emerson  could  write  a  good  letter  on 
occasion,  as  may  be  seen  by  a  dip  almost 
anywhere  into  the  Carlyle-Emerson  corre- 
spondence. But  when  Mr.  Cabot  was  prepar- 
ing his  life  of  Emerson  and  applied  to  Henry 
James,  Senior,  for  permission  to  read  his 
letters  to  Emerson,  Mr.  James  replied,  not 
without  a  touch  of  petulance:  "Emerson 
always  kept  one  at  such  arm's  length,  tasting 
him  and  sipping  him  and  trying  him,  to  make 
sure  that  he  was  worthy  of  his  somewhat 
prim  and  bloodless  friendship,  that  it  was 
fatiguing  to  write  him  letters.  I  can't  recall 
any  serious  letter  I  ever  sent  him.  I  remember 
well  what  maidenly  letters  I  used  to  receive 
from  him."  We  know  what  doctrine  Emerson 
held  on  the  subject  of  "persons."  But  it  is 
just  this  personality  which  makes  Lowell  the 
prince  of  letter  writers.  He  may  attract,  he 
may  irritate,  but  he  never  fails  to  interest  us 
in  himself.  Even  in  his  books  it  is  the  man  in 
the  book  that  interests  most. 

Women  write  good  letters  because  they  are 
sympathetic;  because  they  take  personal 
rather  than  abstract  views ;  because  they 
stay  at  home  a  great  deal  and  are  interested 
in  little  things  and  fond  of  exchanging  con- 
fidences and  news.  They  like  to  receive  letters 
85 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

as  well  as  to  write  them.  The  fact  that  Rich- 
ardson found  his  most  admiring  readers 
among  the  ladies  was  due  perhaps  not  only 
to  the  sentimentality  of  his  novels,  but  to 
their  epistolary  form.  Hence  there  is  apt  to 
be  a  touch  of  the  feminine  in  the  most  accom- 
plished letter  writers.  They  are  gossips,  like 
Horace  Walpole,  or  dilettanti  like  Edward 
Fitzgerald,  or  shy,  reserved,  sensitive  per- 
sons like  Gray  and  Cowper,  who  live  apart, 
retired  from  the  world  in  a  retirement  either 
cloistral  or  domestic ;  who  have  a  few  friends 
and  a  genius  for  friendship,  enjoy  the  exer- 
cise of  their  pens,  feel  the  need  of  unbosom- 
ing themselves,  but  are  not  ready  talkers. 
Above  all  they  are  not  above  being  interested 
in  trifles  and  little  things.  Cowper  was  ab- 
sorbed in  his  hares,  his  cucumber  frames  and 
gardening,  country  walks,  tea-table  chat, 
winding  silk  for  Mrs,  Unwin.  Lamb  was  un- 
ceasingly taken  up  with  the  oddities  and  an- 
tiquities of  London  streets,  the  beggars,  the 
chimney  sweeps,  the  old  benchers,  the  old 
bookstalls,  and  the  like.  Gray  fills  his  corre- 
spondence with  his  solitary  pursuits  and 
recreations  and  tastes :  Gothic  curiosities, 
engravings,  music  sheets,  ballads,  excursions 
here  and  there.  The  familiar  is  of  the  essence 
of  good  letter  writing:  to  unbend,  to  relax, 
to  desipere  in  loco,  to  occupy  at  least  momen- 
tarily the  playful  and  humorous  point  of 
86 


THE  ART  OF  LETTER  WRITING 
view.  Solemn,  prophetic  souls  devoted  to  sub- 
limity are  not  for  this  art.  Dante  and  Milton 
and  "old  Daddy"  Wordsworth,  as  Fitz- 
gerald calls  him,  could  never  have  been  good 
letter  writers :  they  were  too  great  to  care 
about  little  things,  too  high  and  rigid  to 
stoop  to  trifles. 

Letter  writing  is  sometimes  described  as  a 
colloquial  art.  Correspondence,  it  is  said,  is 
a  conversation  kept  up  between  interlocutors 
at  a  distance.  But  there  is  a  difference :  good 
talkers  are  not  necessarily  good  letter 
writers,  and  vice  versa.  Coleridge,  e.g.,  was 
great  in  monologue,  but  his  letters  are  in  no 
way  remarkable.  Cowper,  on  the  other  hand, 
did  not  sparkle  in  conversation,  and  Gray 
was  silent  in  company,  "dull,"  Dr.  Johnson 
called  him.  Johnson  himself,  notoriously  a 
most  accomplished  talker,  does  not  shine  as 
a  letter  writer.  His  letters,  frequently  ex- 
cellent in  substance,  are  ponderous  in  style. 
They  are  of  the  kind  best  described  as  "epis- 
tolary correspondence."  The  Doctor  needed 
the  give  and  take  of  social  intercourse  to 
allay  the  heaviness  of  his  written  discourse. 
His  talk  was  animated,  pointed,  idiomatic, 
but  when  he  sat  down  and  took  pen  in  hand, 
he  began  to  translate,  as  Macaulay  said, 
from  English  into  Johnsonese.  His  celebrated 
letter  of  rebuke  to  Lord  Chesterfield  labors 
under  the  weight  of  its  indignation,  is  not 
87 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

free  from  pomposity  and  pedantry,  and  is 
written  with  an  eye  to  posterity.  One  can 
imagine  the  noble  lord,  himself  an  accom- 
plished letter  writer,  smiling  over  this  oracu- 
lar sentence:  "The  shepherd  in  Virgil  grew 
at  last  acquainted  with  Love,  and  found  him 
a  native  of  the  rocks."  Heine's  irony,  Vol- 
taire's light  touch  would  have  stung  more 
sharply,  though  somewhat  of  Johnson's  dig- 
nified pathos  would  perhaps  have  been  lost. 
Orators,  in  general,  are  not  good  letter 
writers.  They  are  accustomed  to  the  ore 
rotundo  utterance,  the  "big  bow-wow,"  and 
they  crave  the  large  audience  instead  of  the 
audience  of  one. 

The  art  of  letter  writing,  then,  is  a  relaxa- 
tion, an  art  of  leisure,  of  the  idle  moment, 
the  mind  at  ease,  the  bow  unbent,  the  loin 
ungirt.  But  there  are  times  in  every  man's 
life  when  he  has  to  write  letters  of  a  tenser 
mood,  utterances  of  the  passionate  and 
agonized  crises  of  the  soul,  love  letters,  death 
messages,  farewells,  confessions,  entreaties. 
It  seems  profane  to  use  the  word  art  in  such 
connections.  Yet  even  a  prayer,  when  it  is 
articulate  at  all,  follows  the  laws  of  human 
speech,  though  directed  to  the  ear  that 
heareth  in  secret.  The  collects  of  the  church, 
being  generalized  prayer,  employ  a  deliberate 
art. 

Probably  you  have  all  been  called  upon  to 
88 


THE  ART  OF  LETTER  WRITING 
write  letters  of  condolence  and  have  found  it 
a  very  difficult  thing  to  do.  There  is  no 
harder  test  of  tact,  delicacy,  and  good  taste. 
The  least  appearance  of  insincerity,  the  least 
intrusion  of  egotism,  of  an  air  of  effort,  an 
assumed  solemnity,  a  moralizing  or  edifying 
pose,  makes  the  whole  letter  ring  false.  Re- 
serve is  better  here  than  the  opposite  ex- 
treme; better  to  say  less  than  you  feel  than 
even  to  seem  to  say  more. 

There  is  a  letter  of  Lincoln's,  written  to 
a  mother  whose  sons  had  been  killed  in  the 
Civil  War,  which  is  a  brief  model  in  this  kind. 
I  will  not  cite  it  here,  for  it  has  become  a 
classic  and  is  almost  universally  known.  An 
engrossed  copy  of  it  hangs  on  the  wall  of 
Brasenose  College,  Oxford,  as  a  specimen  of 
the  purest  English  diction — the  diction  of 
the  Gettysburg  address. 


89 


THACKERAY'S  CENTENARY 

AFTER  all  that  has  been  written  about 
-t\.  Thackeray,  it  would  be  flat  for  me  to 
present  here  another  estimate  of  his  work, 
or  try  to  settle  the  relative  value  of  his  books. 
In  this  paper  I  shall  endeavor  only  two 
things :  first,  to  enquire  what  changes,  in  our 
way  of  looking  at  him,  have  come  about  in 
the  half  century  since  his  death.  Secondly, 
to  give  my  own  personal  experience  as  a 
reader  of  Thackeray,  in  the  hope  that  it  may 
represent,  in  some  degree,  the  experience  of 
others. 

What  is  left  of  Thackeray  in  this  hun- 
dredth year  since  his  birth.''  and  how  much  of 
him  has  been  eaten  away  by  destructive 
criticism — or  rather  by  time,  that  far  more 
corrosive  acid,  whose  silent  operation  criti- 
cism does  but  record  .-^  As  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury recedes,  four  names  in  the  English  fic- 
tion of  that  century  stand  out  ever  more 
clearly,  as  the  great  names:  Scott,  Dickens, 
Thackeray,  and  George  Eliot.  I  know  what 
may  be  said — what  has  been  said — for 
others:  Jane  Austen  and  the  Bronte  sisters, 
Charles  Reade,  Trollope,  Meredith,  Steven- 
91 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
son,  Hardy.  I  believe  that  these  will  endure, 
but  will  endure  as  writers  of  a  secondary  im- 
portance. Others  are  already  fading:  Bulwer 
is  all  gone,  and  Kingsley  is  going  fast. 

The  order  in  which  I  have  named  the  four 
great  novelists  is  usually,  I  think,  the  order 
in  which  the  reader  comes  to  them.  It  is  also 
the  order  of  their  publication.  For  although 
Thackeray  was  a  year  older  than  Dickens, 
his  first  novels  were  later  in  date,  and  he  was 
much  later  in  securing  his  public.  But  the 
chronological  reason  is  not  the  real  reason 
why  we  read  them  in  that  order.  It  is  because 
of  their  different  appeal.  Scott  was  a  ro- 
mancer, Dickens  a  humorist,  Thackeray  a 
satirist,  and  George  Eliot  a  moralist.  Each 
was  much  more  than  that ;  but  that  was  what 
they  were,  reduced  to  the  lowest  term.  Ro- 
mance, humor,  satire,  and  moral  philosophy 
respectively  were  their  starting  point,  their 
strongest  impelling  force,  and  their  besetting 
sin.  Whenever  they  fell  below  themselves, 
Walter  Scott  lapsed  into  sheer  romantic  un- 
reality, Dickens  into  extravagant  caricature, 
Thackeray  into  burlesque,  George  Eliot  into 
psychology  and  ethical  reflection. 

I  wonder  whether  your  experience  here  is 
the  same  as  mine.  By  the  time  that  I  was 
fourteen,  as  nearly  as  I  can  remember,  I  had 
read  all  the  Waverley  novels.  Then  I  got 
hold  of  Dickens,  and  for  two  or  three  years 
92 


THACKERAY'S  CENTENARY 

I  lived  in  Dickens's  world,  though  perhaps  he 
and  Scott  somewhat  overlapped  at  the 
edge — I  cannot  quite  remember.  I  was  six- 
teen when  Thackeray  died,  and  I  heard  my 
elders  mourning  over  the  loss.  "Dear  old 
Thackeray  is  gone,"  they  told  each  other, 
and  proceeded  to  reread  all  his  books,  with 
infinite  laughter.  So  I  picked  up  "Vanity 
Fair"  and  tried  to  enjoy  it.  But  fresh  from 
Scott's  picturesque  page  and  Dickens's  sym- 
pathetic extravagances,  how  dull,  insipid, 
repellent,  disgusting  were  George  Osborne, 
and  fat  Joseph  Sedley,  and  Amelia  and 
Becky !  What  sillies  they  were  and  how 
trivial  their  doings !  "It's  just  about  a  lot 
of  old  girls,"  I  said  to  my  uncle,  who  laughed 
in  a  provokingly  superior  manner  and 
replied,  "My  boy,  those  old  girls  are  life." 
I  will  confess  that  even  to  this  day,  some- 
thing of  that  shock  of  disillusion,  that  first 
cold  plunge  into  "Vanity  Fair,"  hangs  about 
the  book.  I  understand  what  Mr.  Howells 
means  when  he  calls  it  "the  poorest  of  Thack- 
eray's novels — crude,  heavy-handed,  carica- 
tured." I  ought  to  have  begun,  as  he  did, 
with  "Pendennis,"  of  which  he  writes,  "I  am 
still  not  sure  but  it  is  the  author's  greatest 
book."  I  don't  know  about  that,  but  I  know 
that  it  is  the  novel  of  Thackeray's  that  I 
have  read  most  often  and  like  the  best,  better 
than   "Henry  Esmond"   or  "Vanity   Fair": 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

just  as  I  prefer  "The  Mill  on  the  Floss"  to 
"Adam  Bede,"  and  "The  House  of  the  Seven 
Gables"  to  "The  Scarlet  Letter"  (as  Haw- 
thorne did  himself,  by  the  way)  ;  or  as  I 
agree  with  Dickens  that  "Bleak  House"  was 
his  best  novel,  though  the  public  never 
thought  so.  We  may  concede  to  the  critics 
that,  objectively  considered,  and  by  all  the 
rules  of  judgment,  this  or  that  work  is  its 
author's  masterpiece  and  we  ought  to  like  it 
best — only  we  don't.  We  have  our  private 
preferences  which  we  cannot  explain  and  do 
not  seek  to  defend.  As  for  "Esmond,"  my 
comparative  indifference  to  it  is  only,  I  sup- 
pose, a  part  of  my  dislike  of  the  genre.  I 
know  the  grounds  on  which  the  historical 
novel  is  recommended,  and  I  know  how  inti- 
mately Thackeray's  imagination  was  at  home 
in  the  eighteenth  century.  Historically  that 
is  what  he  stands  for:  he  was  a  Queen  Anne 
man — like  Austin  Dobson :  he  passed  over 
the  great  romantic  generation  altogether  and 
joined  on  to  Fielding  and  Goldsmith  and 
their  predecessors.  Still  no  man  knows  the 
past  as  he  does  the  present.  I  will  take 
Thackeray's  report  of  the  London  of  his 
day;  but  I  do  not  care  very  much  about  his 
reproduction  of  the  London  of  1745.  Let  me 
whisper  to  you  that  since  early  youth  I  have 
not  been  able  to  take  much  pleasure  in  the 
Waverley  novels,  except  those  parts  of  them 
94 


THACKERAY'S  CENTENARY 
in  which  the  author  presents  Scotch  life  and 
character  as  he  knew  them. 

I  think  it  was  not  till  I  was  seventeen  or 
eighteen,  and  a  freshman  in  college,  that  I 
really  got  hold  of  Thackeray ;  but  when  once 
I  had  done  so,  the  result  was  to  drive  Dickens 
out  of  my  mind,  as  one  nail  drives  out 
another.  I  never  could  go  back  to  him  after 
that.  His  sentiment  seemed  tawdry,  his  hu- 
mor, buffoonery.  Hung  side  by  side,  the  one 
picture  killed  the  other.  "Dickens  knows," 
said  Thackeray,  "that  my  books  are  a  pro- 
test against  him :  that,  if  the  one  set  are  true, 
the  other  must  be  false."  There  is  a  species  of 
ingratitude,  of  disloyalty,  in  thus  turning 
one's  back  upon  an  old  favorite  who  has  fur- 
nished one  so  intense  a  pleasure  and  has  had 
so  large  a  share  in  one's  education.  But  it  is 
the  cruel  condition  of  all  growth. 

The  heavens  that  now  draw  him  with  sweetness 

untold, 
Once  found,  for  new  heavens  he  spurneth  the 

old. 

But  when  I  advanced  to  George  Eliot,  as  I 
did  a  year  or  two  later,  I  did  not  find  that 
her  fiction  and  Thackeray's  destroyed  each 
other.  I  have  continued  to  reread  them  both 
ever  since  and  with  undiminished  satisfac- 
tion. And  yet  it  was,  in  some  sense,  an  ad- 
vance. I  would  not  say  that  George  Eliot  was 
95 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
a  greater  novelist  than  Thackeray,  nor  even 
so  great.  But  her  message  is  more  gravely 
intellectual :  the  psychology  of  her  characters 
more  deeply  studied:  the  problems  of  life 
and  mind  more  thoughtfully  confronted. 
Thought,  indeed,  thought  in  itself  and  apart 
from  the  story,  which  is  only  a  chosen  illus- 
tration of  a  thesis,  seems  her  principal  con- 
cern. Thackeray  is  always  concrete,  never 
speculative  or  abstract.  The  mimetic  in- 
stinct was  strong  in  him,  but  weak  in  his 
great  contemporary,  to  the  damage  and  the 
final  ruin  of  her  art.  His  method  was  obser- 
vation, hers  analysis.  Mr.  Brownell  says  that 
Thackeray's  characters  are  "delineated 
rather  than  dissected."  There  is  little  analy- 
sis, indeed  hardly  any  literary  criticism  in 
his  "English  Humorists":  only  personal  im- 
pressions. He  deals  with  the  men,  not  with 
the  books.  The  same  is  true  of  his  art  criti- 
cisms. He  is  concerned  with  the  sentiment  of 
the  picture,  seldom  with  its  technique,  or 
even  with  its  imaginative  or  expressional 
power. 

In  saying  that  Dickens  was  essentially  a 
humorist  and  Thackeray  a  satirist,  I  do  not 
mean,  of  course,  that  the  terms  are  mutually 
exclusive.  Thackeray  was  a  great  humorist 
as  well  as  a  satirist,  but  Dickens  was  hardly 
a  satirist  at  all.  I  know  that  Mr.  Chesterton 
says  he  was,  but  I  cannot  believe  it.  He  cites 
96 


THACKERAY'S  CENTENARY 
"Martin  Chuzzlewit."  Is  "Martin  Chuzzle- 
wit"  a  satire  on  the  Americans?  It  is  a  cari- 
cature— a  very  gross  caricature — a  piece  of 
bouffe.  But  it  lacks  the  true  likeness  which  is 
the  sting  of  satire.  Dickens  and  Thackeray 
had,  in  common,  a  quick  sense  of  the  ridicu- 
lous, but  they  employed  it  differently.  Dick- 
ens was  a  humorist  almost  in  the  Ben  Jon- 
sonian  sense :  his  field  was  the  odd,  the 
eccentric,  the  grotesque — sometimes  the  mon- 
strous; his  books,  and  especially  his  later 
books,  are  full  of  queer  people,  frequently  as 
incredible  as  Jonson's  dramatis  personae. 
In  other  words,  he  was  a  caricaturist.  Mr. 
Howells  says  that  Thackeray  was  a  carica- 
turist, but  I  do  not  think  he  was  so  except 
incidentally;  while  Dickens  was  constantly 
so.  When  satire  identifies  itself  with  its  ob- 
ject, it  takes  the  form  of  parody.  Thack- 
eray was  a  parodist,  a  travesty  writer,  an 
artist  in  burlesque.  What  is  the  difference  be- 
tween caricature  and  parody.''  I  take  it  to  be 
this,  that  caricature  is  the  ludicrous  exag- 
geration of  character  for  purely  comic  effect, 
while  parody  is  its  ludicrous  imitation  for  the 
purpose  of  mockery.  Now  there  is  plenty  of 
invention  in  Dickens,  but  little  imitation.  He 
began  with  broad  facetiae — "Sketches  by 
Boz"  and  the  "Pickwick  Papers" ;  while 
Thackeray  began  with  travesty  and  kept  up 
the  habit  more  or  less  all  his  life.  At  the 
97 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

Charterhouse  he  spent  his  time  in  drawing 
burlesque  representations  of  Shakespeare, 
and  composing  parodies  on  L.  E.  L.  and 
other  lady  poets.  At  Cambridge  he  wrote  a 
mock  heroic  "Timbuctoo,"  the  subject  for 
the  prize  poem  of  the  year — a  prize  which 
Tennyson  captured.  Later  he  wrote  those 
capital  travesties,  "Rebecca  and  Rowena" 
and  "Novels  by  Eminent  Hands."  In  "Fitz- 
boodle's  Confessions"  he  wrote  a  sentimental 
ballad,  "The  Willow  Tree,"  and  straightway 
a  parody  of  the  same.  You  remember  Lady 
Jane  Sheepshanks  who  composed  those  lines 
comparing  her  youth  to 

A  violet  shrinking  meanly 
Where  blow  the  March  winds*  keenly — 
A  timid  fawn  on  wildwood  lawn 
Where  oak-boughs  rustle  greenly. 

I  cannot  describe  the  gleeful  astonishment 
with  which  I  discovered  that  Thackeray  was 
even  aware  of  our  own  excellent  Mrs.  Sig- 
oumey,  whose  house  in  Hartford  I  once  in- 
habited (et  nos  in  Arcadia).  The  passage  is 
in  "Blue-Beard's  Ghost."  "As  Mrs.  Sigour- 
ney  sweetly  sings : — 

"  'O  the  heart  is  a  soft  and  delicate  thing, 
O  the  heart  is  a  lute  with  a  thrilling  string, 
A  spirit  that  floats  on  a  gossamer's  wing.' 

*  Unquestionably  Lady  Jane  pronounced  it  winds. 
98 


THACKERAY'S  CENTENARY 
Such  was  Fatima's  heart."  Do  not  try  to 
find  these  lines  in  Mrs.  Sigourney's  complete 
poems:  they  are  not  there.  Thackeray's 
humor  always  had  this  satirical  edge  to  it. 
Look  at  any  engraving  of  the  bust  by  Deville 
(the  replica  of  which  is  in  the  National  Por- 
trait Gallery),  which  was  taken  when  its 
subject  was  fourteen  years  old.  There  is  a 
quizzical  look  about  the  mouth,  prophetic 
and  unmistakable.  That  boy  is  a  tease:  I 
would  not  like  to  be  his  little  sister.  And 
this  boyish  sense  of  fun  never  deserted  the 
mature  Thackeray.  I  like  to  turn  some- 
times from  his  big  novels,  to  those  delightful 
"Roundabout  Papers"  and  the  like  where  he 
gives  a  free  rein  to  his  frolic :  "Memorials  of 
Gormandizing,"  the  "Ballads  of  Policeman 
X,"  "Mrs.  Perkins'  Ball,"  where  the  Mulli- 
gan of  Ballymulligan,  disdaining  the  waltz 
step  of  the  Saxon,  whoops  around  the  room 
with  his  terrified  partner  in  one  of  the  dances 
of  his  own  green  land.  Or  that  paper  which 
describes  how  the  author  took  the  children 
to  the  zoological  gardens,  and  how 

First  he  saw  the  white  bear,  then  he  saw  the 

black, 
Then  he  saw  the  camel  with  a  hump  upon  his 

back. 
Chorus  of  Children: 
Then  he  saw  the  camel  with  the  HUMP  upon 

his  back. 

99 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

Of  course  in  all  comic  art  there  is  a  touch  of 
caricature,  i.e.,  of  exaggeration.  The  Rev. 
Charles  Honeyman  in  "The  Newcomes,"  e.g., 
has  been  denounced  as  a  caricature.  But 
compare  him  with  any  of  Dickens's  clerical 
characters,  such  as  Stiggins  or  Chadband, 
and  say  which  is  the  fine  art  and  which  the 
coarse.  And  this  brings  me  to  the  first  of 
those  particulars  in  which  we  do  not  view 
Thackeray  quite  as  his  contemporaries 
viewed  him.  In  his  own  time  he  was  regarded 
as  the  greatest  of  English  realists.  "I  have 
no  head  above  my  eyes,"  he  said.  "I  describe 
what  I  see."  It  is  thus  that  Anthony  Trol- 
lope  regarded  him,  whose  life  of  Thackeray 
was  published  in  1879.  And  of  his  dialogue, 
in  special,  Trollope  writes,  "The  ear  is  never 
wounded  by  a  tone  that  is  false."  It  is  not 
quite  the  same  to-day.  Zola  and  the  roman 
naturaliste  of  the  French  and  Russian  novel- 
ists have  accustomed  us  to  forms  of  realism 
so  much  more  drastic  that  Thackeray's 
realism  seems,  by  comparison,  reticent  and 
partial.  Not  that  he  tells  falsehoods,  but  that 
he  does  not  and  will  not  tell  the  whole  truth. 
He  was  quite  conscious,  himself,  of  the  limits 
which  convention  and  propriety  imposed 
upon  him  and  he  submitted  to  them  willingly. 
"Since  the  author  of  'Tom  Jones'  was 
buried,"  he  wrote,  "no  writer  of  fiction  has 
been  permitted  to  depict,  to  his  utmost 
100 


THACKERAY'S  CENTENARY 
power,  a  Man."  Thackeray's  latest  biogra- 
pher, Mr.  Whibley,  notes  in  him  certain 
early  Victorian  prejudices.  He  wanted  to 
hang  a  curtain  over  Etty's  nudities.  Goethe's 
"Wahlverwandtschaften"  scandalized  him. 
He  found  the  drama  of  Victor  Hugo  and 
Dumas  "profoundly  immoral  and  absurd"; 
and  had  no  use  for  Balzac,  his  own  closest 
parallel  in  French  fiction.  Mr.  G.  B.  Shaw, 
the  blasphemer  of  Shakespeare,  speaks  of 
Thackeray's  "enslaved  mind,"  yet  admits 
that  he  tells  the  truth  in  spite  of  himself. 
"He  exhausts  all  his  feeble  pathos  in  trying 
to  make  you  sorry  for  the  death  of  Col. 
Newcome,  imploring  you  to  regard  him  as  a 
noble-hearted  gentleman,  instead  of  an  in- 
sufferable old  fool  .  .  .  but  he  gives  you  the 
facts  about  him  faithfully."  But  the  denial 
of  Thackeray's  realism  goes  farther  than 
this  and  attacks  in  some  instances  the  truth- 
fulness of  his  character  portrayal.  Thus  Mr. 
Whibley,  who  acknowledges,  in  general,  that 
Thackeray  was  "a  true  naturalist,"  finds 
that  the  personages  in  several  of  his  novels 
are  "drawn  in  varying  planes."  Charles 
Honeyman  and  Fred  Bayham,  e.g.,  are  frank 
caricatures;  Helen  and  Laura  Pendennis, 
and  "Stunning"  Warrington  are  somewhat 
unreal ;  Colonel  Newcome  is  overdrawn — "the 
travesty  of  a  man";  and  even  Beatrix  Es- 
mond, whom  Mr.  Brownell  pronounces  her 
101 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
creator's  masterpiece,  is  a  "picturesque  ap- 
parition rather  than  a  real  woman."  And 
finally  comes  Mr.  Howells  and  affirms  that 
Thackeray  is  no  realist  but  a  caricaturist : 
Jane  Austen  and  Trollope  are  the  true 
realists. 

Well,  let  it  be  granted  that  Thackeray  is 
imperfectly  realistic.  I  am  not  concerned  to 
defend  him.  Nor  shall  I  enter  into  this  weari- 
some discussion  of  what  realism  is  or  is  not, 
further  than  to  say  that  I  don't  believe  the 
thing  exists ;  that  is,  I  don't  believe  that 
photographic  fiction — the  "mirror  up  to 
nature"  fiction — exists  or  can  exist.  A  mirror 
reflects,  a  photograph  reproduces  its  object 
without  selection  or  rejection.  Does  any 
artist  do  this.'^  Try  to  write  the  history  of 
one  day:  everything — literally  everything — 
that  you  have  done,  said,  thought :  and 
everything  that  you  have  seen  done,  or 
heard  said  during  twenty-four  hours.  That 
would  be  realism,  but,  suppose  it  possible, 
what  kind  of  reading  would  it  make-f*  The 
artist  must  select,  reject,  combine,  and  he 
does  it  differently  from  every  other  artist: 
he  mixes  his  personality  with  his  art,  colors 
his  art  with  it.  The  point  of  view  from  which 
he  works  is  personal  to  himself:  satire  is  a 
point  of  view,  humor  is  a  point  of  view,  so  is 
religion,  so  is  morality,  so  is  optimism  or 
pessimism,  or  any  philosophy,  temper,  or 
102 


THACKERAY'S  CENTENARY 

mood.  In  speaking  of  the  great  Russians  Mr. 
Howells  praises  their  "transparency  of  style, 
unclouded  by  any  mist  of  the  personality 
which  we  mistakenly  value  in  style,  and  which 
ought  no  more  to  be  there  than  the  artist's 
personality  should  be  in  a  portrait."  This 
seems  to  me  true;  though  it  was  said  long 
ago,  the  style  is  the  man.  Yet  if  this  trans- 
parency, this  impersonality  is  measurably 
attainable  in  the  style,  it  is  not  so  in  the  sub- 
stance of  the  novel.  If  an  impersonal  report 
of  life  is  the  ideal  of  naturalistic  or  realistic 
fiction — and  I  don't  say  it  is — then  it  is  an 
impossible  ideal.  People  are  saying  now  that 
Zola  is  a  romantic  writer.  Why.?*  Because, 
however  well  documented,  his  facts  are  se- 
lected to  make  a  particular  impression.  I 
suppose  the  reason  why  Thackeray's  work 
seemed  so  much  more  realistic  to  his  genera- 
tion than  it  does  to  ours  was  that  his  par- 
ticular point  of  view  was  that  of  the  satirist, 
and  his  satire  was  largely  directed  to  the 
exposure  of  cant,  humbug,  affectation,  and 
other  forms  of  unreality.  Disillusion  was  his 
trade.  He  had  no  heroes,  and  he  saw  all 
things  in  their  unheroic  and  unromantic 
aspect.  You  all  know  his  famous  caricature 
of  Ludovicus  Rex  inside  and  outside  of  his 
court  clothes:  a  most  majestic,  bewigged  and 
beruffled  grand  monarque:  and  then  a 
spindle-shanked,  pot-bellied,  bald  little  man — 
103 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

a  good  illustration  for  a  chapter  in  "Sartor 
Resartus."  The  ship  in  which  Thackeray  was 
sent  home  from  India,  a  boy  of  six,  touched 
at  St.  Helena  and  he  saw  Napoleon.  He 
always  remembered  him  as  a  little  fat  man  in 
a  suit  of  white  duck  and  a  palm-leaf  hat. 

Thackeray  detested  pose  and  strut  and 
sham  heroics.  He  called  Byron  "a  big  sulky 
dandy."  "Lord  Byron,"  he  said,  "wrote  more 
cant  .  .  .  than  any  poet  I  know  of.  Think 
of  the  'peasant  girls  with  dark  blue  eyes'  of 
the  Rhine — the  brown-faced,  flat-nosed, 
thick-lipped,  dirty  wenches !  Think  of  'filling 
high  a  cup  of  Samian  wine':  .  .  .  Byron 
himself  always  drank  gin."  The  captain  in 
"The  White  Squall"  does  not  pace  the  deck 
like  a  dark-browed  corsair,  but  calls, 
"George,  some  brandy  and  water !" 

And  this  reminds  me  of  Thackeray's 
poetry.  Of  course  one  who  held  this  attitude 
toward  the  romantic  and  the  heroic  could  not 
be  a  poet  in  the  usual  sense.  Poetry  holds  the 
quintessential  truth,  but,  as  Bacon  says,  it 
"subdues  the  shows  of  things  to  the  desires 
of  the  mind";  while  realism  clings  to  the 
shows  of  things,  and  satire  disenchants, 
ravels  the  magic  web  which  the  imagination 
weaves.  Heine  was  both  satirist  and  poet,  but 
he  was  each  by  turns,  and  he  had  the  touch 
of  ideality  which  Thackeray  lacked.  Yet 
Thackeray  wrote  poetry  and  good  poetry  of 
104 


THACKERAY'S  CENTENARY 

a  sort.  But  it  has  beauty  purely  of  sentiment, 
never  of  the  imagination  that  transcends  the 
fact.  Take  the  famous  lines  with  which  this 
same  "White  Squall"  closes : 

And  when,  its  force  expended. 
The  harmless  storm  was  ended, 
And  as  the  sunrise  splendid 

Came  blushing  o'er  the  sea; 
I  thought,  as  day  was  breaking. 
My  little  girls  were  waking 
And  smiling  and  making 

A  prayer  at  home  for  me. 

And  such  is  the  quality  of  all  his  best  things 
in  verse — "The  Mahogany  Tree,"  "The 
Ballad  of  Bouillebaisse,"  "The  End  of  the 
Play";  a  mixture  of  humor  and  pensiveness, 
homely  fact  and  sincere  feeling. 

Another  modern  criticism  of  Thackeray  is 
that  he  is  always  interrupting  his  story  with 
reflections.  This  fault,  if  it  is  a  fault,  is  at  its 
worst  in  "The  Newcomes,"  from  which  a 
whole  volume  of  essays  might  be  gathered. 
The  art  of  fiction  is  a  progressive  art  and  we 
have  learned  a  great  deal  from  the  objective 
method  of  masters  like  Turgenev,  Flaubert, 
and  Maupassant.  I  am  free  to  confess,  that, 
while  I  still  enjoy  many  of  the  passages  in 
which  the  novelist  appears  as  chorus  and 
showman,  I  do  find  myself  more  impatient  of 
them  than  I  used  to  be.  I  find  myself  skipping 
a  good  deal.  I  wonder  if  this  is  also  your  ex- 
106 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

perience.  I  am  not  sure,  however,  but  there 
are  signs  of  a  reaction  against  the  slender, 
episodic,  short-story  kind  of  fiction,  and  a  re- 
turn to  the  old-fashioned,  biographical  novel. 
Mr.  Brownell  discusses  this  point  and  says 
that  "when  Thackeray  is  reproached  with 
'bad  art'  for  intruding  upon  his  scene,  the  re- 
proach is  chiefly  the  recommendation  of  a 
different  technique.  And  each  man's  tech- 
nique is  his  own."  The  question,  he  acutely 
observes,  is  whether  Thackeray's  subjectiv- 
ity destroys  illusion  or  deepens  it.  He  thinks 
that  the  latter  is  true.  I  will  not  argue  the 
point  further  than  to  say  that,  whether 
clumsy  or  not,  Thackeray's  method  is  a 
thoroughly  English  method  and  has  its  roots 
in  the  history  of  English  fiction.  He  is  not 
alone  in  it.  George  Eliot,  Hawthorne,  and 
Trollope  and  many  others  practise  it ;  and 
he  learned  it  from  his  master,  Fielding. 

Fifty  years  ago  it  was  quite  common  to 
describe  Thackeray  as  a  cynic,  a  charge 
from  which  Shirley  Brooks  defended  him 
in  the  well-known  verses  contributed  to 
"Punch"  after  the  great  novelist's  death. 
Strange  that  such  a  mistake  should  ever  have 
been  made  about  one  whose  kindness  is  as 
manifest  in  his  books  as  in  his  life:  "a  big, 
fierce,  weeping  man,"  as  Carlyle  grotesquely 
describes  him:  a  writer  in  whom  we  find 
to-day  even  an  excess  of  sentiment  and  a 
106 


THACKERAY'S  CENTENARY 

persistent  geniality  which  sometimes  irri- 
tates. But  the  source  of  the  misapprehen- 
sion is  not  far  to  seek.  His  satiric  and 
disenchanting  eye  saw,  with  merciless  clair- 
voyance, the  disfigurements  of  human  nature, 
and  dwelt  upon  them  perhaps  unduly.  He 
saw 

How  very  weak  the  very  wise. 
How  very  small  the  very  great  are. 

Moreover,  as  with  many  other  humorists, 
with  Thomas  Hood  and  Mark  Twain  and 
Abraham  Lincoln  (who  is  one  of  the  fore- 
most American  humorists),  a  deep  melan- 
choly underlay  his  fun.  Vanitas  vanitatum 
is  the  last  word  of  his  philosophy.  Evil 
seemed  to  him  stronger  than  good  and  death 
better  than  life.  But  he  was  never  bitter:  his 
pen  was  driven  by  love,  not  hate.  Swift  was 
the  true  cynic,  the  true  misanthrope;  and 
Thackeray's  dislike  of  him  has  led  him  into 
some  injustice  in  his  chapter  on  Swift  in 
"The  English  Humorists."  And  therefore  I 
have  never  been  able  to  enjoy  "The  Luck  of 
Barry  Lyndon"  which  has  the  almost  unani- 
mous praises  of  the  critics.  The  hard,  arti- 
ficial irony  of  the  book — maintained,  of 
course,  with  superb  consistency  —seems  to  me 
uncharacteristic  of  its  author.  It  repels  and 
wearies  me,  as  does  its  model,  "Jonathan 
Wild."  Swift's  irony  I  enjoy  because  it  is 
107 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
the  natural  expression  of  his  character.  With 
Thackeray  it  is  a  mask. 

Lastly  I  come  to  a  point  often  urged 
against  Thackeray.  The  favorite  target  of 
his  satire  was  the  snob.  His  lash  was  always 
being  laid  across  flunkey  ism,  tuft  hunting,  the 
"mean  admiration  of  mean  things,"  such  as 
wealth,  rank,  fashion,  title,  birth.  Now,  it  is 
said,  his  constant  obsession  with  this  subject, 
his  acute  consciousness  of  social  distinctions, 
prove  that  he  is  himself  one  of  the  class  that 
he  is  ridiculing.  "Letters  four  do  form  his 
name,"  to  use  a  phrase  of  Dr.  Holmes,  who 
is  accused  of  the  same  weakness,  and,  I  think, 
with  more  reason.  Well,  Thackeray  owned 
that  he  was  a  snob,  and  said  that  we  are  all 
of  us  snobs  in  a  greater  or  less  degree. 
Snobbery  is  the  fat  weed  of  a  complex  civili- 
zation, where  grades  are  unfixed,  where  some 
families  are  going  down  and  others  rising  in 
the  world,  with  the  consequent  jealousies, 
heartburnings,  and  social  struggles.  In 
India,  I  take  it,  where  a  rigid  caste  system 
prevails,  there  are  no  snobs.  A  Brahmin  may 
refuse  to  eat  with  a  lower  caste  man,  whose 
touch  is  contamination,  but  he  does  not  de- 
spise him  as  the  gentleman  despises  the  cad, 
as  the  man  who  eats  with  a  fork  despises  the 
man  who  eats  with  a  knife,  or  as  the  educated 
Englishman  despises  the  Cockney  who  drops 
his  h's,  or  the  Boston  Brahmin  the  Yankee 
108 


THACKERAY'S  CENTENARY 

provincial  who  says  haow,  the  woman  who 
callates,  and  the  gent  who  wears  pants.  In 
feudal  ages  the  lord  might  treat  the  serf  like 
a  beast  of  the  field.  The  modem  swell  does 
not  oppress  his  social  inferior:  he  only  calls 
him  a  bounder.  In  primitive  states  of  society 
differences  in  riches,  station,  power  are  ac- 
cepted quite  simply:  they  do  not  form 
ground  for  envy  or  contempt.  I  used  to  be 
puzzled  by  the  conventional  epithet  applied 
by  Homer  to  Eumaeus — "the  godlike  swine- 
herd"— which  is  much  as  though  one  should 
say,  nowadays,  the  godlike  garbage  col- 
lector. But  when  Pope  writes 

Honor  and  fame  from  no  condition  rise 

he  writes  a  lying  platitude.  In  the  eighteenth 
century,  and  in  the  twentieth,  honor  and 
fame  do  rise  from  condition.  Now  in  the 
presence  of  the  supreme  tragic  emotions,  of 
death,  of  suffering,  all  men  are  equal.  But 
this  social  inequality  is  the  region  of  the 
comedy  of  manners,  and  that  is  the  region 
in  which  Thackeray's  comedy  moves — the 
comedie  mondaine,  if  not  the  full  comedie 
humaine.  It  is  a  world  of  convention,  and  he 
is  at  home  in  it,  in  the  world  and  a  citizen  of 
the  world.  Of  course  it  is  not  primitively 
human.  Manners  are  a  convention:  but  so 
are  morals,  laws,  society,  the  state,  the 
church.  I  suppose  it  is  because  Thackeray 
109 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

dwelt  contentedly  in  these  conventions  and 
rather  liked  them  although  he  laughed  at 
them,  that  Shaw  calls  him  an  enslaved  mind. 
At  any  rate,  this  is  what  Mr.  Howells  means 
when  he  writes:  "When  he  made  a  mock  of 
snobbishness,  I  did  not  know  but  snobbish- 
ness was  something  that  might  be  reached 
and  cured  by  ridicule.  Now  I  know  that  so 
long  as  we  have  social  inequality  we  shall 
have  snobs :  we  shall  have  men  who  bully  and 
truckle,  and  women  who  snub  and  crawl,  I 
know  that  it  is  futile  to  spurn  them,  or  lash 
them  for  trying  to  get  on  in  the  world,  and 
that  the  world  is  what  it  must  be  from  the 
selfish  motives  which  underlie  our  economic 
life.  .  .  .  This  is  the  toxic  property  of  all 
Thackeray's  writing.  .  .  .  He  rails  at  the 
order  of  things,  but  he  imagines  nothing  dif- 
ferent." In  other  words,  Thackeray  was  not 
a  socialist,  as  Mr,  Shaw  is,  and  Mr.  Howells, 
and  as  we  are  all  coming  measurably  to  be. 
Meanwhile,  however,  equality  is  a  dream. 

All  his  biographers  are  agreed  that 
Thackeray  was  honestly  fond  of  mundane 
advantages.  He  liked  the  conversation  of 
clever,  well-mannered  gentlemen,  and  the  so- 
ciety of  agreeable,  handsome,  well-dressed 
women.  He  liked  to  go  to  fine  houses :  liked 
his  club,  and  was  gratified  when  asked  to  dine 
with  Sir  Robert  Peel  or  the  Duke  of  Devon- 
shire, Speaking  of  the  South  and  of  slavery, 
110 


THACKERAY'S  CENTENARY 
he  confessed  that  he  found  it  impossible  to 
think  ill  of  people  who  gave  you  such  good 
claret. 

This  explains  his  love  of  Horace.  Venables 
reports  that  he  would  not  study  his  Latin 
at  school.  But  he  certainly  brought  away 
with  him  from  the  Charterhouse,  or  from 
Trinity,  a  knowledge  of  Horace.  You  recall 
what  delightful,  punning  use  he  makes  of  the 
lyric  Roman  at  every  turn.  It  is  solvuntur 
rupes  when  Colonel  Newcome's  Indian  for- 
tune melts  away;  and  Hosa  sera  moratur 
when  little  Rose  is  slow  to  go  off  in  the  matri- 
monial market.  Now  Horace  was  eminently  a 
man  of  the  world,  a  man  about  town,  a  club 
man,  a  gentle  satirist,  with  a  cheerful,  mun- 
dane philosophy  of  life,  just  touched  with 
sadness  and  regret.  He  was  the  poet  of  an 
Augustan  age,  like  that  English  Augustan 
age  which  was  Thackeray's  favorite;  social, 
gregarious,  urban. 

I  never  saw  Thackeray.  I  was  a  boy  of 
eight  when  he  made  his  second  visit  to 
America,  in  the  winter  of  1855-56.  But 
Arthur  Hollister,  who  graduated  at  Yale  in 
1858,  told  me  that  he  once  saw  Thackeray 
walking  up  Chapel  Street,  a  colossal  figure, 
six  feet  four  inches  in  height,  peering 
through  his  big  glasses  with  that  expression 
which  is  familiar  to  you  in  his  portraits  and 
in  his  charming  caricatures  of  his  own  face. 
Ill 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
This  seemed  to  bring  him  rather  near.  But 
I  think  the  nearest  that  I  ever  felt  to  his 
bodily  presence  was  once  when  Mr.  Evarts 
showed  me  a  copy  of  Horace,  with  inserted 
engravings,  which  Thackeray  had  given  to 
Sam  Ward  and  Ward  had  given  to  Evarts. 
It  was  a  copy  which  Thackeray  had  used 
and  which  had  his  autograph  on  the  fljdeaf. 
And  this  mention  of  his  Latin  scholarship 
induces  me  to  close  with  an  anecdote  that  I 
find  in  Melville's  "Life."  He  says  himself  that 
it  is  almost  too  good  to  be  true,  but  it  illus- 
trates so  delightfully  certain  academic  atti- 
tudes, that  I  must  give  it,  authentic  or  not. 
The  novelist  was  to  lecture  at  Oxford  and 
had  to  obtain  the  license  of  the  Vice-Chan- 
cellor.  He  called  on  him  for  the  necessary 
permission  and  this  was  the  dialogue  that 
ensued : 

V.  C.  Pray,  sir,  what  can  I  do  for  you.^ 

T.  My  name  is  Thackeray. 

V.  C.  So  I  see  by  this  card. 

T.  I   seek  permission  to  lecture  within  your 
precincts. 

V.  C.  Ah!  You  are  a  lecturer:  what  subjects 
do  you  undertake,  religious  or  political.'' 

T.  Neither.  I  am  a  literary  man. 

V.  C.  Have  you  written  anything? 

T.  Yes,  I  am  the  author  of  "Vanity  Fair." 

V.  C.  1  presume,  a  dissenter — has  that  any- 
thing to  do  with  Jno.  Bunyan's  book? 
112 


THACKERAY'S  CENTENARY 

T.  Not  exactly:  I  have  also  written  "Pen- 
dennis." 

V.  C.  Never  heard  of  these  works,  but  no 
doubt  they  are  proper  books. 

T.  I  have  also  contributed  to  "Punch." 

V.  C.  "Punch."  I  have  heard  of  that.  Is  it  not 
a  ribald  publication? 


118 


RETROSPECTS  AND  PROSPECTS  OF 
THE   ENGLISH   DRAMA* 

THE  English  drama  has  been  dead  for 
nearly  two  hundred  years.  Mr.  Gosse 
says  that  in  1700  the  English  had  the  most 
vivacious  school  of  comedy  in  Europe.  And, 
if  their  serious  drama  was  greatly  inferior, 
still  the  best  tragedies  of  Dryden  and  Otway 
— and  perhaps  of  Lee,  Southerne,  and  Rowe 
— made  not  only  a  sounding  success  on  the 
boards,  but  a  fair  bid  for  literary  honors. 
Ten  years  later  the  drama  was  moribund,  and 
in  1747  its  epitaph  was  spoken  by  Gar  rick 
in  the  sonorous  prologue  written  by  Dr. 
Johnson  for  the  opening  of  Drury  Lane : 

Then,  crushed  by  rules  and  weakened  as  refined, 
For  years  the  power  of  Tragedy  declined: 
From  bard  to  bard  the  frigid  caution  crept, 

*This  article  was  printed  in  the  North  American 
Review  in  two  instalments,  in  May,  1905,  and  July, 
1907.  The  growth  of  the  literary  drama  in  the  last 
fifteen  years  has  been  so  marked,  and  plays  of  such 
high  quality  have  been  put  upon  the  stage  by  new 
writers  like  Barrie,  Synge,  Masefield,  Kennedy, 
Moody,  Sheldon,  and  others,  that  these  prophecies 
and  reflections  may  seem  out  of  date.  The  article  is 
retained,  notwithstanding,  for  whatever  there  may  be 
in  it  that  is  true  of  drama  in  generaL 

115 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

Till  declamation  roared  whilst  passion  slept. 
Yet  still  did  Virtue  deign  the  stage  to  tread ; 
Philosophy  remained  though  nature  fled. 
But,  forced  at  length  her  ancient  reign  to  quit. 
She  saw  great  Faustus  lay  the  ghost  of  wit: 
Exulting  Folly  hailed  the  joyful  day, 
And  pantomime  and  song  confirmed  her  sway — 

That  is,  as  has  been  complained  a  hundred 
times  before  and  since,  the  opera  and  the 
spectacular  show  drove  the  legitimate  drama 
from  the  stage. 

The  theatre,  indeed,  is  not  dead:  it  has 
continued  to  live  and  to  flourish,  and  is  fur- 
nishing entertainment  to  the  public  to-day, 
as  it  did  two  hundred — nay,  two  thousand — 
years  ago.  The  theatre,  as  an  institution,  has 
a  life  of  its  own,  whose  history  is  recorded  in 
innumerable  volumes.  Playhouses  have  multi- 
plied in  London,  in  the  provinces,  in  all  Eng- 
lish-speaking lands.  The  callings  of  the  actor 
and  the  playwright  have  given  occupation  to 
many,  and  rich  rewards  to  not  a  few.  Schol- 
ars, critics,  and  literary  men  are  apt  to  look 
at  the  drama  as  if  it  were  simply  a  depart- 
ment of  literature.  In  reading  a  play,  we 
should  remember  that  we  are  taking  the 
author  at  a  disadvantage.  It  is  not  meant  to 
be  read,  but  to  be  acted.  It  is  not  mere  litera- 
ture :  it  is  both  more  and  less  than  literature. 
The  art  of  the  theatre  is  a  composite  art,  re- 
quiring the  help  of  the  scene-painter,  the  cos- 
116 


THE  ENGLISH  DRAMA 

turner,  the  manager,  the  stage-carpenter, 
sometimes  of  the  musician  and  dancer, 
nowadays  of  the  electrician;  and  always  and 
above  all  demanding  the  interpretation  of  the 
actor.  It  is  not  addressed  to  the  understand- 
ing exclusively,  but  likewise  to  the  eye  and 
the  ear.  It  is  a  show,  as  well  as  a  piece  of 
writing.  The  drama  can  subsist  without  any 
dialogue  at  all,  as  in  the  pantomime ;  or  with 
the  dialogue  reduced  to  its  lowest  terms,  as 
in  the  Italian  commedie  a  soggetto,  where  the 
actors  improvised  the  lines.  "The  skeleton  of 
every  play  is  a  pantomime,"  says  Professor 
Brander  Matthews,  who  reminds  us  that  not 
only  buifoonery  and  acrobatic  performances 
may  be  carried  on  silently  by  stock  charac- 
ters like  Harlequin,  Columbine,  Pantaloon, 
and  Punchinello;  but  a  story  of  a  more  pre- 
tentious kind  may  be  enacted  entirely  by  ges- 
ture and  dumb  show,  as  in  the  French  panto- 
mime play  "UEnfant  Prodigue."  A  good 
dramatist  includes  a  good  playwright,  one 
who  can  invent  striking  situations,  telling 
climaxes,  tableaux,  ensemble  scenes,  spec- 
tacular and  histrionic  effects,  coups  de 
theatre.  These  things  may  seem  to  the  liter- 
ary student  the  merely  mechanical  or  tech- 
nical parts  of  the  art.  Yet,  without  them,  a 
play  will  be  amateurish,  and  no  really  suc- 
cessful dramatist  has  ever  been  lacking  in 
this  kind  of  skill. 

117 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
Still,  although  stage  presentation,  the  mise 
en  scene,  is  the  touchstone  of  a  play  as  play, 
it  is  of  course  quite  possible  to  read  a  play 
with  pleasure.  It  is  even  better  to  read  it 
than  to  see  it  badly  acted,  just  as  one  would 
rather  have  no  pictures  in  a  novel  than  such 
pictures  as  disturb  one's  ideas  of  the  char- 
acters. A  musical  adept  can  take  pleasure  in 
reading  the  score  of  an  opera,  though  he 
would  rather  hear  it  performed.  This  is  not 
to  say  that  a  play  depends  for  its  effect  upon 
actual  performance  in  anywhere  near  the 
same  degree  as  a  musical  composition;  for 
written  speech  is  a  far  more  definite  lan- 
guage than  musical  notation.  I  use  the  latter 
only  as  an  imperfect  illustration. 

This  professional  quality  has  been  much 
insisted  on  by  practical  playwrights,  who  are 
properly  contemptuous  of  closet  drama.  But 
just  what  is  a  closet  drama.''  Let  it  be  defined 
provisionally  as  a  piece  meant  to  be  read  and 
not  acted.  Yet  a  play's  chances  for  represen- 
tation depend  partly  on  the  condition  of  the 
theatre  and  the  demands  of  the  public.  Mr. 
Yeats,  for  example,  thinks  that  a  play  of  any 
poetic  or  spiritual  depth  has  no  chance 
to-day  in  a  big  London  theatre,  with  an  audi- 
ence living  on  the  surface  of  life;  and  he 
advises  that  such  plays  be  tried  in  small  sub- 
urban or  country  playhouses  before  audi- 
ences of  scholars  and  simple,  unspoiled  folk. 
118 


I 


f 


THE  ENGLISH  DRAMA 

To  the  English  public,  with  its  desire  for 
strong  action  and  variety,  Racine's  tragedies 
are  nothing  but  closet  dramas ;  and  yet  they 
are  played  constantly  and  with  applause  in 
the  French  theatre.  In  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, when  the  English  stage  still  maintained 
a  literary  tradition, — though  it  had  lost  all 
literary  vitality, — the  rankest  sort  of  closet 
dramas  were  frequently  put  on  and  listened 
to  respectfully.  No  manager  now  would  ven- 
ture to  mount  such  a  thing  as  "Cato"  or 
"Sophonisba"  or  "The  Castle  Spectre."  The 
modern  public  will  scarcely  endure  sheer 
poetry,  or  long  descriptive  and  reflective  ti- 
rades even  in  Shakespeare.  Such  passages 
have  to  be  cut  in  the  acting  versions.  The 
Elizabethan  craving  for  drama  was  such  that 
everything  was  tried,  though  some  things, 
when  brought  to  the  test  of  action,  proved 
failures.  Ben  Jonson's  heavy  tragedies,  "Cat- 
iline" and  "Sejanus,"  failed  on  the  stage; 
and  Daniel's  "Cleopatra"  never  got  so  far  as 
the  stage,  a  rare  example  of  an  Elizabethan 
closet  drama.  Very  likely,  modern  literary 
plays  like  "Philip  Van  Artevelde"  and 
Tennyson's  "Queen  Mary"  might  have  suc- 
ceeded in  the  seventeenth  century.  For  the 
audiences  of  those  days  were  omnivorous. 
They  hungered  for  sensation,  but  they  en- 
joyed as  well  fine  poetry,  noble  declamation, 
philosophy,  sweet  singing,  and  the  clown  with 
119 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
his  funny  business,  all  in  close  neighborhood. 
They  cared  more  for  quantity  of  life  than 
for  delicate  art.  Their  art,  indeed,  was  in 
some  ways  quite  artless,  and  the  drama  had 
not  yet  purged  itself  of  lyric,  epic,  and  di- 
dactic elements,  nor  attained  a  purely  dra- 
matic type.  Since  then,  the  French,  whose 
ideal  is  not  so  much  fulness  of  life  as  perfec- 
tion of  form,  have  taught  English  play- 
wrights many  lessons.  Brunetiere,  speaking 
of  the  gradual  evolution  and  differentiation 
of  literary  kinds  (genres),  says  that  Shake- 
speare's theatre,  as  theatre,  exhibits  the  art 
of  drama  in  its  infancy. 

Perhaps,  then,  no  hard  and  fast  line  can 
be  drawn  between  an  acting  drama  and  a 
closet  play.  It  is  largely  a  matter  of  con- 
temporary taste.  "Cato,"  we  know,  made  a 
prodigious  hit.  Coleridge's  "Remorse,"  a 
closet  drama  if  there  ever  was  one,  and  a  very 
rubbishy  affair  at  that,  was  put  on  by  Sheri- 
dan, though  with  many  misgivings,  and 
lasted  twenty  nights,  a  good  run  for  those 
days.  No  audience  now  would  stand  it  an 
hour.  And  yet  we  have  seen  Sir  Henry  Irving 
forcing  Tennyson's  dramatic  poems  into  a 
temporary  succes  d'estime.  "Samson  Ago- 
nistes"  is  a  closet  play,  without  question; 
but  is  "The  Cenci",''  Shelley  wanted  it 
played,  and  had  selected  Miss  O'Niel  for  the 
role  of  Beatrice.  But  it  never  got  itself 
120 


THE  ENGLISH  DRAMA 

played  till  1889,  when  it  was  given  before 
the  Shelley  Society  at  South  Kensington. 
The  picked  audience  applauded  it,  just  as 
an  academic  audience  will  applaud  a  re- 
hearsal of  the  "Antigone"  in  the  original 
Greek;  but  the  dramatic  critics  sent  down 
by  the  London  newspapers  to  report  the 
performance  were  unconvinced. 

Let  it  be  granted,  then,  that  the  question 
in  the  case  of  any  given  play  is  a  question  of 
more  or  less.  Still,  the  difference  between  our 
modern  literary  drama,  as  a  whole,  and  the 
Elizabethan  drama, — which  was  also  literary, 
— as  a  whole,  I  take  to  be  this :  that  in  our 
time  literature  has  lost  touch  with  the  stage. 
In  the  seventeenth  century,  the  poets  wrote 
for  the  theatre.  They  knew  that  their  plays 
would  be  played.  In  the  nineteenth  century, 
English  poets  who  adopted  the  dramatic 
framework  did  not  write  for  the  theatre. 
They  did  not  expect  their  pieces  to  be 
played,  and  they  addressed  themselves  con- 
sciously to  the  reader.  When  one  of  them  had 
the  luck  to  get  upon  the  boards,  it  was  an 
exception,  and  the  manager  generally  lost 
money  by  it.  Thus,  in  the  late  thirties  and 
early  forties,  in  one  of  those  efforts  to  "ele- 
vate the  stage,"  which  recur  with  comic  per- 
sistence in  our  dramatic  annals,  Macready 
rallied  the  literati  to  his  aid  and  presented, 
among  other  things,  Taylor's  "Philip  Van 
121 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
Artevelde,"  Talfourd's  "Ion,"  Bulwer's 
"Richelieu"  and  "The  Lady  of  Lyons,"  and 
Browning's  "Stafford"  and  "A  Blot  in  the 
'Scutcheon."  The  only  titles  on  this  list  that 
secured  a  permanent  foothold  on  the  reper- 
toire of  the  playhouses  were  Bulwer's  two 
pieces,  which  were  precisely  the  most  flimsy 
of  the  whole  lot,  from  the  literary  point  of 
view.  "A  Blot  in  the  'Scutcheon"  has  been 
tried  again.  As  I  saw  it  a  number  of  years 
ago,  with  Lawrence  Barrett  cast  for  Lord 
Tresham  and  Marie  Wainwright  as  Mildred, 
it  seemed  to  me — in  spite  of  its  somewhat  ab- 
surd motivirung — decidedly  impressive  as  an 
acting  play.  On  the  other  hand,  "In  a  Bal- 
cony," though  very  intelligently  and  sympa- 
thetically presented  by  Mrs.  Lemoyne  and 
Otis  Skinner,  was  too  subtle  for  a  popular 
audience,  and  was  manifestly  unfitted  for  the 
stage. 

The  closet  drama  is  a  quite  legitimate 
product  of  literary  art.  The  playhouse  has 
no  monopoly  of  the  dramatic  form.  Indeed, 
as  the  closet  dramatist  is  not  bound  to  con- 
sider the  practical  exigencies  of  the  theatre, 
to  consult  the  prejudices  of  the  manager  or 
the  spectators,  fill  the  pockets  of  the  com- 
pany, or  provide  a  role  for  a  star  performer, 
he  has,  in  many  ways,  a  freer  hand  than  the 
professional  playwright.  He  need  not  sacri- 
fice truth  of  character  and  probability  of 
122 


THE  ENGLISH  DRAMA 

plot  to  the  need  of  highly  accentuated  situa- 
tions. He  does  not  have  to  consider  whether 
a  speech  is  too  long,  too  ornate  in  diction, 
too  deeply  thoughtful  for  recitation  by  an 
actor.  If  the  action  lags  at  certain  points, 
let  it  lag.  In  short,  as  the  aim  of  the  closet 
dramatist  is  other  than  the  playwright's,  so 
his  methods  may  be  independent. 

In  the  rather  bitter  preface  to  the  printed 
version  of  "Saints  and  Sinners"  (1891),  Mr. 
Henry  Arthur  Jones  complains  of  "the  Eng- 
lish practice  of  writing  plays  to  order  for  a 
star  performer,"  together  with  other  "bind- 
ing and  perplexing  .  .  .  conventions  and 
limitations  of  playwriting,"  as  "quite  suffi- 
cient to  account  for  the  literary  degradation 
of  the  modern  drama."  The  English  closet 
drama  of  the  nineteenth  century  is  an  impor- 
tant body  of  literature,  of  higher  intellectual 
value  than  all  the  stage  plays  produced  in 
England  during  the  same  period.  It  is  not 
necessary  to  enumerate  its  triumphs :  I  will 
merely  remind  the  reader,  in  passing,  that 
work  like  Byron's  "Manfred,"  Landor's 
"Gebir,"  George  Eliot's  "The  Spanish 
Gypsy,"  Beddoes's  "Death's  Jest-Book,"  Ar- 
nold's "Empedocles  on  Etna,"  Tennyson's 
"Becket,"  Browning's  "Pippa  Passes"  and 
Swinburne's  "Atalanta  in  Calydon,"  is  justi- 
fied in  its  assumption  of  the  dramatic  form, 
though  its  appeal  is  only  to  the  closet  reader. 
128 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
I  do  not  forget  that  one  or  two  of  these  have 
been  tried  upon  the  stage,  but  they  do  not 
belong  there,  and,  as  theatre  pieces,  were  fiat 
failures. 

It  is  hard  to  say  exactly  what  qualities 
ensure  stage  success.  As  reading  plays, 
Lillo's  "George  Barnwell"  is  intolerably 
stilted,  Knowles's  "Virginius"  insipid,  "The 
Lady  of  Lyons"  tawdry ;  yet  all  of  them  took 
notoriously,  and  the  last  two — as  any  one 
can  testify  who  has  seen  them  performed — 
retain  a  certain  effectiveness  even  now. 
Perhaps  the  secret  lies  in  simplicity  and 
directness  of  construction,  unrelaxing  ten- 
sion, quick  movement,  and  an  instinctive 
seizure  of  the  essentially  dramatic  crises  in 
the  action.  In  a  word,  the  thing  has  "go"; 
lacking  which,  no  cleverness  of  dialogue,  no 
epigrammatic  sharpness  of  wit  or  delicate 
play  of  humor  can  save  a  comedy;  and  no 
beauty  of  style,  no  depth  or  reach  of 
thought,  a  tragedy.  Hence  it  is  pertinent  to 
remark  how  many  popular  playwrights  have 
been  actors  or  in  close  practical  relations 
with  the  theatre.  In  the  seventeenth  century 
this  was  a  matter  of  course.  Shakespeare  was 
an  actor,  and  Moliere  and  Jonson  and  Mar- 
lowe and  Greene  and  Otway,  and  countless 
others.  Gibber  was  an  actor  and  stage-man- 
ager. Sheridan  and  both  Colmans  were  man- 
agers. Garrick  and  Foote  wrote  plays  as  well 
124 


THE  ENGLISH  DRAMA 

as  acted  them.  Knowles,  Boucicault,  Robert- 
son, Pinero  and  Stephen  Phillips  have  all 
been  actors. 

Conceded  that  this  professional  point  of 
view  has  been  rightly  emphasized,  yet  before 
the  acted  drama  can  rank  as  literature,  or 
even  hope  to  hold  possession  of  the  stage 
itself  for  more  than  a  season,  it  must  stand  a 
further  test.  It  must  read  well,  too.  If  it  is 
no  more  than  an  after-dinner  amusement, 
without  intellectual  meaning  or  vital  relation 
to  life:  if  it  has  neither  strength  nor  truth 
nor  beauty  as  a  criticism  of  life,  or  an  ima- 
ginative representation  of  life,  what  interest 
can  it  have  for  serious  people.''  Let  us  stay 
at  home  and  read  our  Thackeray.  Eugene 
Scribe  was  perhaps  the  cunningest  master  of 
stagecraft  who  ever  wrote.  Schlegel  ranked 
him  above  Moliere.  He  left  the  largest  for- 
tune ever  accumulated  by  a  French  man  of 
letters.  His  plays  were  more  popular  in  all 
the  theatres  of  Europe  than  anything  since 
Kotzebue's  melodramas ;  and  all  European 
purveyors  for  the  stage  strove  to  imitate  the 
adroitness  and  ingenuity  with  which  his  plots 
were  put  together.  But  if  one  to-day  tries  to 
read  any  one  of  his  three  hundred  and  fifty 
pieces — say,  "Adrienne  Lecouvreur"  or  "La 
Bataille  des  Dames" — one  will  find  little  in 
them  beyond  the  mechanical  perfection  of 
the  construction,  and  will  feel  how  powerless 
125 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

mere  technical  cleverness  is  to  keep  alive  false 
and  superficial  conceptions. 

When  it  is  asserted,  then,  that  the  British 
drama  has  been  dead  for  nearly  two  hundred 
years,  what  is  really  meant  is  that  its  literary 
vitality  went  out  of  it  some  two  centuries 
ago,  and  has  not  yet  come  back.  It  is  hard 
to  say  what  causes  the  breath  of  life  suddenly 
to  enter  some  particular  literary  form,  in- 
spire it  fully  for  a  few  years,  and  then  desert 
it  for  another;  leaving  it  all  flaccid  and  in- 
animate. Literary  forms  have  their  periods. 
No  one  now  sits  down  to  compose  an  epic 
poem  or  a  minstrel  ballad  or  a  five-act  blank- 
verse  tragedy  without  an  uneasy  sense  of 
anachronism.  The  dramatic  form  had  run 
along  in  England  for  generations,  from  the 
mediaeval  miracles  down  to  the  rude  chronicle 
histories,  Senecan  tragedies,  and  clownish 
interludes  of  the  sixteenth  century.  Sud- 
denly, in  the  last  years  of  that  century,  the 
spark  of  genius  touched  and  kindled  it  into 
the  great  drama  of  Elizabeth.  About  the 
middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  life  aban- 
doned it  again,  and  took  possession  of  the 
novel.  Fielding  is  the  point  of  contact  be- 
tween the  dying  drama  and  new-born  fiction. 
The  whole  process  of  the  change  may  be  fol- 
lowed in  him.  "Tom  Jones"  and  "Amelia" 
still  rank  as  masterpieces,  but  who  reads 
"The  Modern  Husband,"  or  "Miss  Lucy  in 
126 


THE  ENGLISH  DRAMA 

Town,"  or  "Love  in  Several  Masques,"  or 
any  other  of  Fielding's  plays?  How  many 
even  know  that  he  wrote  any  plays?  Mr. 
Shaw  attributes  Fielding's  change  of  base  to 
the  government  censorship.  He  writes : 

In  1737  Henry  Fielding,  the  greatest  prac- 
tising dramatistj,  with  the  single  exception  of 
Shakspere,  produced  by  England  between  the 
Middle  Ages  and  the  nineteenth  century,  de- 
voted his  genius  to  the  task  of  exposing  and 
destroying  parliamentary  corruption.  .  .  .  Wal- 
pole  .  .  .  promptly  gagged  the  stage  by  a 
censorship  which  is  in  full  force  at  the  present 
moment  [1898].  Fielding,  driven  out  of  the 
trade  of  Moliere  and  Aristophanes,  took  to  that 
of  Cervantes;  and  since  then,  the  English  novel 
has  been  one  of  the  glories  of  literature,  whilst 
the  English  drama  has  been  its  disgrace. 

But  Mr.  Shaw's  explanation  fails  to  ex- 
plain, and  his  estimate  of  Fielding's  talent 
for  drama  is  too  high.  With  the  exception  of 
"Tom  Thumb,"  his  plays  are  very  dull,  and 
it  is  doubtful  whether,  given  the  freest  hand, 
he  would  ever  have  become  a  great  dramatist. 
It  was  not  Walpole  but  the  Zeitgeist  that 
was  responsible  for  his  failure  in  one  literary 
form  and  his  triumph  in  another.  The  clock 
had  run  down,  and  though  Goldsmith  and 
Sheridan  wound  it  up  once  more  towards  the 
end  of  the  century,  it  only  went  for  an  hour 
or  so.  It  is  usual  to  refer  to  their  comedy 
127 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
group  as  the  last  flare  of  the  literary  drama 
in  England  before  its  final  extinction. 

In  the  appendix  to  Clement  Scott's  "The 
Drama  of  Yesterday  and  To-day"  there  is 
given,  by  way  of  supplement  to  Genest,  a  list 
of  the  new  plays  put  on  at  London  theatres 
between  1830  and  1900.  They  number  about 
twenty- four  hundred;  and — until  we  reach 
the  last  decade  of  the  century — it  would  be 
hard  to  pick  out  a  dozen  of  them  which  have 
become  a  part  of  English  literature:  which 
any  one  would  think  of  reading  for  pleasure 
or  profit,  as  one  reads,  say,  the  plays  of 
Marlowe  or  Fletcher  or  Congreve.  Of  course, 
many  of  the  pieces  on  the  list  are  of  non- 
literary  kinds — burlesques,  vaudevilles,  op- 
eras, and  the  like.  Then  there  is  a  large 
body  of  translations  and  adaptations  from 
the  foreign  drama,  more  especially  from  the 
French  of  Scribe,  Sardou,  Dumas,  pere  et 
filsy  d'Hennery,  Labiche,  Goudinet,  Meilhac 
and  Halevy,  Ohnet,  and  many  others.  Next 
to  the  French  theatre,  the  most  abundant 
feeder  of  our  modern  stage  has  been  con- 
temporary fiction.  Nowadays,  every  success- 
ful novel  is  immediately  dramatized.  This  has 
been  the  case,  more  or  less,  for  three-quarters 
of  a  century.  The  Waverley  Novels  were 
dramatized  in  their  time,  and  Dickens's 
stories  in  theirs,  and  there  are  a  plenty  of 
dramatized  novels  on  Scott's  catalogue.  But 
128 


THE  ENGLISH  DRAMA 
the  practice  has  greatly  increased  of  recent 
years.  Now,  for  some  reason,  a  dramatized 
novel  seldom  means  a  good  play;  that  is  to 
say,  permanently  good,  though  it  may  act 
fairly  well  for  a  season.  One  does  not  care  to 
read  the  stage  version  of  "Vanity  Fair," 
known  as  "Becky  Sharp,"  any  more  than  one 
would  care  to  read  "The  School  for  Scandal" 
diluted  into  a  novel.  The  dramatist  conceives 
and  moulds  his  theme  otherwise  than  the 
novelist.  "Playwriting,"  says  Walter  Scott, 
"is  the  art  of  forming  situations."  To  be 
sure,  Shakespeare  took  plots  from  Italian 
"novels,"  so  called;  that  is,  short  romantic 
tales  like  Boccaccio's  or  Bandello's.  But  he 
took  only  the  bare  outline,  and  altered  freely. 
The  modern  novel  is  a  far  more  elaborate 
thing.  In  it,  not  only  incident  and  character, 
but  a  great  part  of  the  dialogue  is  already 
done  to  hand. 

Glancing  over  Clement  Scott's  list,  old 
playgoers  will  find  their  memories  somewhat 
pathetically  stirred  by  forgotten  fashions  and 
schools.  There  are  Planche's  extravaganzas, 
and  later  Dion  Boucicault's  versatilities — 
"classical"  comedies  like  "London  Assur- 
ance," sentimental  Irish  melodramas — "The 
Shaughraun,"  "The  Colleen  Bawn" — and 
popular  favorites,  such  as  "Rip  Van 
Winkle";  the  equally  versatile  Tom  Taylor, 
with  his  "Our  American  Cousin,"  "The 
129 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

Ticket-of-Leave  Man,"  etc. ;  Burnand's  mul- 
tifarious facetiae;  the  cockney  vulgarities  of 
that  very  prolific  Mr.  H.  J.  Byron;  and,  in 
the  late  sixties,  Robertson's  "cup-and- 
saucer"  comedies — "Ours,"  "Caste,"  "So- 
ciety," "School."  Three  thousand  represen- 
tations of  these  fashionable  comedies  were 
given  inside  of  twenty  years.  How  gay,  how 
brilliant,  even,  the  dialogue  seemed  to  us  in 
those  good  old  days !  But  take  up  the  text  of 
one  of  Tom  Robertson's  plays  now  and  try 
to  read  it.  What  has  become  of  the  sparkle.'' 
Does  any  one  recall  the  famous  "Ours" 
galop  that  we  used  to  dance  to  conside 
Planco?  Eheu  fugaces! 

The  playwriters  whom  I  have  named,  and 
others  whom  I  might  have  named,  their  con- 
temporaries, were  the  Clyde  Fitches,  Augus- 
tus Thomases,  and  George  Ades  of  their  gen- 
eration. They  provided  a  fair  article  of 
entertainment  for  the  public  of  their  time,  but 
they  added  nothing  to  literature.  The  pov- 
erty of  the  English  stage,  during  these  late 
centuries,  in  work  of  real  substance  and 
value,  is  the  more  striking  because  there  has 
been  no  dearth  of  genius  in  other  depart- 
ments. There  have  been  great  English  poets, 
novelists,  humorists,  essayists,  critics,  his- 
torians. Moreover,  the  literary  drama  has 
flourished  in  other  countries.  France  has 
never  lacked  accomplished  artists  in  this 
130 


THE  ENGLISH  DRAMA 

kind:  from  Voltaire  to  Victor  Hugo,  from 
Hugo  to  Rostand,  talent  always,  and  genius 
not  unfrequently,  have  been  at  the  service  of 
the  French  theatres.  In  Germany — with  some 
breaks — the  case  has  been  the  same.  From 
Lessing  and  Goethe  and  Schiller  down  to  our 
own  contemporaries,  to  Hauptmann,  Suder- 
mann,  and  Halbe,  Germany  has  seldom  been 
without  worthy  dramatists.  Both  the  Ger- 
mans and  the  French  have  taken  the  theatre 
seriously.  Their  actors  have  been  carefully 
trained,  their  audiences  intelligently  critical, 
their  playhouses  in  part  maintained  by  gov- 
ernment subventions,  as  institutions  impor- 
tantly related  to  the  national  life. 

It  is  not  that  English  men  of  letters  have 
been  unwilling  to  contribute  to  the  stage.  On 
the  contrary,  they  have  shown  an  eager,  al- 
though mostly  ineffectual,  ambition  for  dra- 
matic honors.  In  the  eighteenth  century  it 
was  well-nigh  the  rule  that  a  successful 
writer  should  try  his  hand  at  a  play. 
Addison  did  so,  and  Steele,  Pope,  Gay, 
Fielding,  Johnson,  Goldsmith,  Smollett, 
Thomson,  Mason,  Mallet,  Chatterton,  and 
many  others  who  had  no  natural  turn  for  it, 
and  would  not  think  of  such  a  thing  now.  In 
the  nineteenth  century  the  tradition  had  lost 
much  of  its  force:  still,  we  find  Scott,  Cole- 
ridge, Byron,  Shelley,  Tennyson,  Thackeray, 
Browning,  Matthew  Arnold,  Swinburne,  all 
131 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

using  the  dramatic  form,  and  some  of  them 
attempting  the  stage.  Charles  Lamb,  one  of 
the  most  ardent  of  playgoers  and  best  of 
dramatic  critics,  was  greatly  chagrined  by 
the  failure  of  his  farce,  "Mr.  H ."  Dick- 
ens was  a  good  actor  in  private  theatricals, 
and  was  intensely  concerned  with  the  theatre 
and  the  theatrical  fortunes  of  his  own 
dramatized  novels.  So  was  Charles  Reade, 
who  collaborated  with  Tom  Taylor  in  a  num- 
ber of  plays,  and  whose  theatre-piece  "Masks 
and  Faces,"  was  the  original  of  his  novelette, 
"Peg  Woffington" — vice  versa  the  usual  case. 
More  recently  we  have  seen  Stevenson  and 
Henley  collaborating  in  three  plays,  "Deacon 
Brodie"  and  "Beau  Austin,"  performed  at 
London  and  Montreal  in  1884-87,  and  "Ad- 
miral Guinea,"  shown  at  the  Haymarket  in 
1890 ;  the  first  and  third,  low-life  melodrama 
and  broad  comedy,  of  some  vigor  but  no 
great  importance;  the  second,  an  unusually 
good  eighteenth  century  society  play.  Most 
certainly  these  experiments  do  not  rank  with 
Stevenson's  romances  or  Henley's  poems. 
Another  curious  illustration  of  the  attrac- 
tion of  the  dramatic  form  for  the  literary 
mind  is  Thomas  Hardy's  "The  Dynasts" 
(1904),  a  drama  of  the  Napoleonic  wars, 
projected  in  nineteen  acts,  with  choruses  of 
spirits  and  personified  abstractions ;  a  sort 
of  reversion  to  the  class  of  morality  and 
132 


THE  ENGLISH  DRAMA 

chronicle  play  exemplified  in  Bale's  "King 
John."  Mr.  Hardy  is  perhaps  the  foremost 
living  English  novelist,  but  "The  Dynasts" 
is  a  dramatic  monster,  and,  happily,  a  torso. 
The  preface  confesses  that  the  abortion  is  a 
"panoramic  show"  and  intended  for  "mental 
performance"  only,  and  suggests  an  apology 
for  closet  drama  by  inquiring  whether  "men- 
tal performance  alone  may  not  eventually  be 
the  fate  of  all  drama  other  than  that  of  con- 
temporary or  frivolous  life." 

Mr.  Henry  James,  too,  has  tempted  the 
stage,  teased,  yet  fascinated,  by  the  "insuf- 
ferable little  art" ;  and  the  result  is  a  drama- 
tized version  of  "Daisy  Miller,"  and  two 
volumes  of  "Theatricals":  "Tenants"  and 
"Disengaged"  (1894)  ;  "The  Album"  and 
"The  Reprobate"  (1895).  These  last  were 
written  with  a  view  to  their  being  played  at 
country  theatres  (an  opportunity  having 
seemingly  presented  itself),  but  they  never 
got  so  far.  In  reading  them,  one  feels  that  a 
single  rehearsal  would  have  decided  their 
chances.  Mr.  James,  in  the  preface  to  the 
printed  plays,  treats  his  failure  with  humor- 
ous resignation.  He  complains  of  "the  hard 
meagreness  inherent  in  the  theatrical  form," 
and  of  his  own  conscientious  effort  to  avoid 
supersubtlety  and  to  cultivate  an  "anxious 
simplicity"  and  a  "deadly  directness" — to 
write  "something  elaborately  plain."  It  was 
133 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
to  be  expected  that  Mr.  James's  habit  of  re- 
fined analysis  would  prove  but  a  poor  prep- 
aration for  acted  drama;  and  that  his  sin- 
gular coldness  or  shyness  or  reticence  would 
handicap  him  fatally  in  emotional  crises. 
Whenever  he  is  led  squarely  up  to  such,  he 
bolts.  Innuendo  is  not  the  language  of  pas- 
sion. In  vain  he  cries:  "See  me  being  popu- 
lar: observe  this  play  to  the  gallery."  The 
failure  is  so  complete  as  to  have  the  finality 
of  a  demonstration. 

What  was  less  to  be  expected  is  the  odd 
way  in  which  this  artist  drops  realism  for 
melodrama  and  farce  when  he  exchanges  fic- 
tion for  playwriting.  Sir  Ralph  Damant,  in 
"The  Album,"  is  a  farce  or  "humor"  char- 
acter in  the  Jonsonian  sense,  his  particular 
obsession  being  a  fixed  idea  that  all  the 
women  in  the  play  want  to  marry  him.  In 
"Disengaged,"  Mrs.  Wigmore,  a  campaigner 
with  a  trained  daughter,  is  another  farce 
character ;  and  there  are  iterations  of  phrase 
and  catchwords  here  and  elsewhere,  as  in 
Dickens's  or  Jonson's  humorists.  In  "The 
Reprobate,"  Paul  Doubleday  and  Pitt 
Brunt,  M.P.,  have  the  accentuated  contrast 
of  the  Surface  brothers.  In  "The  Album," 
that  innocent  old  stage  trick  is  played  again, 
whereby  some  article — a  lace  handkerchief, 
a  scrap  of  paper,  a  necklace,  or  what  not — is 
made  the  plot  centre.  In  "Daisy  Miller" — 
134 


THE  ENGLISH  DRAMA 

dramatized  version — the  famous  little  master- 
piece is  spoiled  by  the  substitution  of  a  con- 
ventional happy  ending  and  the  introduction 
of  a  blackmailing  villain.  All  this  insinuates 
a  doubt  as  to  the  reality  of  a  realism  which 
turns  into  improbability  and  artificiality 
merely  by  a  change  in  the  method  of  presen- 
tation. But  the  doubt  is  unfair.  No  reductio 
ad  absurdum  has  occurred,  but  simply 
another  instance  of  the  law  that  every  art 
has  its  own  method,  and  that  the  method  of 
the  novel  is  not  that  of  the  play.  Of  course, 
there  are  clever  things  in  the  dialogue  of 
these  three-act  comedies,  for  Mr.  James  is 
always  Mr.  James.  But  the  only  one  of  them 
that  comes  near  to  being  a  practicable 
theatre  piece  is  "Tenants,"  which  has  a  good 
plot  founded  on  a  French  story. 

The  paralysis  of  the  literary  drama,  then, 
has  not  been  due  to  the  indifference  of  the 
literary  class.  Perhaps  it  is  time  thrown 
away  to  seek  for  its  cause.  The  fact  is  that, 
for  one  reason  or  another,  England  has  lost 
the  dramatic  habit. 

The  past  fifteen  or  twenty  years  have  wit- 
nessed one  more  concerted  effort  to  "elevate 
the  English  stage,"  and  this  time  with  a  fair 
prospect  of  results.  There  is  a  stir  of  expec- 
tation: the  new  drama  is  announced  and  al- 
ready in  part  arrived.  It  would  be  premature 
to  proclaim  success  as  yet ;  but  thus  much 
185 


L 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
may  be  affirmed,  that  the  dramatic  output  of 
the  last  quarter-century  outweighs  that  of 
any  other  quarter-century  since  1700.  Here, 
for  instance,  are  the  titles  of  a  dozen  contem- 
porary plays  which  it  would  be  hard  to 
match  with  any  equal  number  produced 
during  an  equal  period  of  time  since  the  fail- 
ure of  Congreve's  latest  and  most  brilliant 
comedy,  "The  Way  of  the  World,"  marked 
the  close  of  the  Restoration  drama:  W.  S. 
Gilbert's  "Pygmalion  and  Galatea";  Sydney 
Grundy's  "An  Old  Jew";  Henry  Arthur 
Jones's  "Judah"  and  "The  Liars";  Arthur 
Wing  Pinero's  "The  Second  Mrs.  Tan- 
queray"  and  "The  Benefit  of  the  Doubt"; 
George  Bernard  Shaw's  "Candida"  and 
"Arms  and  the  Man";  Oscar  Wilde's  "Sa- 
lome" and  "Lady  Windermere's  Fan"; 
Stephen  Phillips's  "Ulysses" ;  and  W.  Butler 
Yeats's  "The  Land  of  Heart's  Desire."  (I 
have  gone  back  a  few  years  to  include  Mr. 
Gilbert's  piece,  first  given  at  the  Haymarket 
in  1871.) 

Every  one  of  these  dramas  has  been  per- 
formed with  acceptance,  every  one  of  them 
is  a  contribution  to  literature,  worthy  the 
attention  of  cultivated  readers.  I  do  not  say 
that  any  one  of  them  is  a  masterpiece,  or 
that  collectively  they  will  hold  the  stage  as 
Goldsmith's  and  Sheridan's  are  still  holding 
it  a  century  and  a  quarter  after  their  first 
186 


THE  ENGLISH  DRAMA 

production.  But  I  will  venture  to  say  that, 
taken  together,  they  constitute  a  more  solid 
and  varied  group  of  dramatic  works  than 
that  favorite  little  bunch  of  "classical" 
comedies,  and  offer  a  securer  ground  of 
hope  for  the  future  of  the  British  stage.  It 
will  be  observed  that  half  of  them  are  trage- 
dies, or  plays  of  a  serious  interest ;  also  that 
they  do  not  form  a  school,  in  the  sense  in 
which  the  French  tragedy  of  Louis  XIV,  or 
the  English  comedy  of  the  Restoration,  was 
a  school — that  is,  a  compact  dramatic 
group,  limited  in  subject  and  alike  in  manner. 
They  are  the  work  of  individual  talents,  con- 
forming to  no  single  ideal,  but  operating  on 
independent  lines.  And  it  would  be  easy  to 
add  a  second  dozen  by  the  same  authors 
little,  if  at  all,  inferior  to  those  on  the  first 
list. 

Probably  the  foremost  English  play- 
writer  of  to-day  is  Mr.  A.  W.  Pinero, 
whether  tried  by  the  test  of  popular  success 
in  the  theatre,  or  by  the  literary  quality  of 
his  printed  dramas.  He  learned  his  art  as 
Shakespeare  learned  his,  by  practical  ex- 
perience as  an  actor,  and  by  years  of  obscure 
work  as  a  hack  writer  for  the  playhouses, 
adapting  from  the  French,  dramatizing 
novels,  scribbling  one-act  curtain-raisers  and 
all  kinds  of  theatrical  nondescripts.  There  is 
a  long  list  of  failures  and  half  successes  to 
137 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

his  account  before  he  emerged,  about  1885, 
with  a  series  of  three-act  farces,  "The  Magis- 
trate," "The  Cabinet  Minister,"  "The 
Schoolmistress"  and  the  like,  which  pleased 
every  one  by  their  easy,  natural  style,  their 
fresh  invention,  the  rollicking  fun.  that 
carried  off  their  highly  improbable  entangle- 
ments, and  the  bonhomie  and  knowledge  of 
the  world  with  which  comic  character  was 
observed  and  portrayed.  Absurdity  is  the 
kingdom  of  farce;  and,  as  in  the  topsyturvy 
world  of  opera  bouffe,  a  great  part  of  the 
effect  in  these  plays  is  obtained  by  setting 
dignified  persons,  like  prime  ministers,  cathe- 
dral deans  and  justices,  to  doing  ludicrously 
incongruous  actions.  Thus,  the  schoolmis- 
tress, outwardly  a  very  prim  and  proper 
gentlewoman,  leads  a  double  life,  putting  in 
her  Christmas  vacation  as  a  figurante  in 
comic  opera;  anticipating,  and  perhaps  sug- 
gesting, Mr.  Zangwill's  "Serio-Comic  Gov- 
erness." 

To  these  farces  succeeded  pieces  in  which 
social  satire,  sentimental  comedy,  and  the 
comedy  of  character  were  mixed  in  varying 
proportions :  "Sweet  Lavender,"  "The  Prin- 
cess and  the  Butterfly,"  "Trelawney  of  the 
Wells,"  and  others.  Of  these,  the  first  was, 
perhaps,  the  favorite,  and  was  translated  and 
performed  in  several  languages.  It  is  a  very 
winning  play,  with  a  genuine  popular  qual- 
138 


THE  ENGLISH  DRAMA 

ity,  though  with  a  slight  twist  in  its  senti- 
ment. Pinero's  art  has  deepened  in  tone, 
until  in  such  later  work  as  "The  Profligate," 
"The  Benefit  of  the  Doubt,"  "The  Second 
Mrs.  Tanqueray,"  "The  Notorious  Mrs. 
Ebbsmith,"  and  "Iris,"  he  has  dealt  seriously, 
and  sometimes  tragically,  with  the  nobler 
passions.  His  chef  d'oeuvre  in  this  kind,  "The 
Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray,"  is  constructed  with 
consummate  skill,  and  its  psychology  is  right 
and  true.  This  is  a  problem  play  (it  is  un- 
fortunate that  we  apply  this  term  exclu- 
sively to  plays  dealing  with  one  particular 
class  of  problems),  and  its  ethical  value,  as 
well  as  its  tragical  force,  lies  in  its  demon- 
stration of  the  truth  that  no  one  can  escape 
from  his  past.  The  past  will  avenge  itself 
upon  him  or  her,  not  only  in  the  unforeseen 
consequences  of  old  misdeeds,  but  in  that 
subtler  nemesis,  the  deterioration  of  charac- 
ter which  makes  life  under  better  conditions 
irksome  and  impossible.  The  catastrophe 
comes  with  the  inevitableness  of  the  old  Greek 
fate-tragedies.  In  this  instance,  it  is  suicide, 
as  in  "Hedda  Gabler"  or  Hauptmann's  "Vor 
Sonnenaufgang"  Though  criticised  as  melo- 
dramatic, the  dramatist  makes  us  feel  it  here 
to  be  the  only  solution.  Mr.  Pinero  has  al- 
ready achieved  the  distinction  of  a  "Pinero 
Birthday  Book" ;  while  "Arthur  Wing 
Pinero:  a  Study,"  by  H.  Hamilton  Fyfe,  a 
139 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
book  of  two  hundred  and  fifty  pages,  with  a 
bibliography,  reviews  his  plays  seriatim. 

Without  pushing  the  analogy  too  far,  we 
may  call  Mr.  Pinero  and  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw 
the  Goldsmith  and  Sheridan  of  the  modern 
stage.  In  Pinero,  as  in  Goldsmith,  humor 
more  than  wit  is  the  prevailing  impression. 
That  "brilliancy"  which  is  often  so  distress- 
ing is  absent  from  his  comedy,  whose  surfaces 
do  not  corruscate,  but  absorb  the  light 
softly.  His  satire  is  good-natured,  his  world- 
liness  not  hard,  and  his  laughter  is  a  neigh- 
bor to  tears.  Shaw  is  an  Irishman,  a  journal- 
istic free-lance  and  Socialist  pamphleteer. 
He  has  published  three  collections  of  plays — 
"Pleasant,"  "Unpleasant,"  and  "For  Puri- 
tans"— accompanied  with  amusingly  trucu- 
lent prefaces,  discussing,  among  other 
things,  whether  his  pieces  are  "better  than 
Shakespeare's."  Two  of  his  comedies,  "Arms 
and  the  Man"  and  "The  Devil's  Disciple," 
were  put  on  in  New  York  by  Mr.  Mansfield 
as  long  ago,  if  I  am  right,  as  1894  and  1897, 
respectively.  "Arms  and  the  Man"  is  an 
effective  theatre  piece,  with  a  quick  move- 
ment, ingenious  misunderstandings,  and  sev- 
eral exciting  moments.  Like  his  fellow  coun- 
tryman, Sheridan,  Mr.  Shaw  is  clever  in  in- 
venting situations,  though  he  professes  scorn 
of  them  as  bits  of  old  theatrical  lumber,  a 
concession  to  the  pit.  "Candida"  was  given 
140 


THE  ENGLISH  DRAMA 
in  America  a  season  or  two  ago,  and  the 
problems  of  character  which  it  proposes  have 
been  industriously  discussed  by  the  dramatic 
critics  and  by  social  circles  everywhere.  The 
author  is  reported  to  have  been  amused  at 
this,  and  to  have  described  his  heroine  as  a 
most  unprincipled  woman — a  view  quite  in- 
consistent with  the  key  kindly  afforded  in  the 
stage  directions.  These,  in  all  Shaw's  plays, 
are  explicit  and  profuse,  comprising  details 
of  costume,  gesture,  expression,  the  furni- 
ture and  decorations  of  the  scene,  with  full 
character  analyses  of  the  dramatis  personae 
in  the  manner  of  Ben  Jonson.  The  italicized 
portions  of  the  printed  play  are  little  less 
important  than  the  speeches;  and  small 
license  of  interpretation  is  left  to  the 
players.  This  is  an  extra-dramatic  method, 
the  custom  of  the  novel  overflowing  upon  the 
stage.  But  Mr.  Shaw  defends  the  usage  and 
asks :  "What  would  we  not  give  for  the  copy 
of  'Hamlet'  used  by  Shakespeare  at  re- 
hearsal, with  the  original  'business'  scrawled 
by  the  prompter's  pencil?  And  if  we  had,  in 
addition,  the  descriptive  directions  which  the 
author  gave  on  the  stage:  above  all,  the 
character  sketches,  however  brief,  by  which 
he  tried  to  convey  to  the  actor  the  sort  of 
person  he  meant  him  to  incarnate!  Well,  we 
should  have  had  all  this  if  Shakespeare,  in- 
stead of  merely  writing  out  his  lines,  had 
141 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
prepared  the  plays  for  publication  in  compe- 
tition with  fiction  as  elaborate  as  that  of 
Meredith."  "I  would  give  half  a  dozen  of 
Shakespeare's  plays  for  one  of  the  prefaces 
he  ought  to  have  written." 

Shaw's  appeal  has  been  more  acutely  in- 
tellectual than  Pinero's,  but  his  plays  are 
less  popular  and  less  satisfying;  while  the 
critics,  he  complains,  refuse  to  take  him 
seriously.  They  treat  him  as  an  irresponsible 
Irishman  with  a  genius  for  paradox,  a 
puzzling  way  of  going  back  on  himself,  and 
a  freakish  delight  in  mystifying  the  public. 
The  heart  interest  in  his  plays  is  small.  He 
has  the  Celtic  subtlety,  but  not  the  Celtic 
sentiment;  in  this,  too,  resembling  Sheridan, 
that  wit  rather  than  humor  is  the  staple  of 
his  comedy — a  wit  which  in  both  is  employed 
in  the  service  of  satire  upon  sentiment.  But 
the  modern  dramatist's  satire  cuts  deeper 
and  is  more  caustic.  Lydia  Languish  and 
Joseph  Surface,  Sheridan's  embodiments  of 
romance  and  sentiment,  are  conceived  super- 
ficially and  belong  to  the  comedy  of  manners, 
not  of  character.  Sheridan  would  not  have 
understood  Lamb's  saying  that  Charles  Sur- 
face was  the  true  canting  hypocrite  of  "The 
School  for  Scandal."  For  nowadays  senti- 
ment and  romance  take  less  obvious  shapes ; 
and  Shaw,  who  detests  them  both  and  holds 
142 


THE  ENGLISH  DRAMA 

a  retainer  for  realism,  tests  for  them  with 
finer  reagents. 

And  here  comes  in  the  influence  of  Ibsen, 
perhaps  the  most  noticeable  foreign  influence 
in  the  recent  English  drama,  from  which  it 
has  partly  driven  out  the  French,  hitherto 
all-predominant.  Ibsen's  introduction  to  the 
English  stage  dates  from  1889  and  the  years 
following,  although  Mr.  Gosse's  studies  and 
the  translations  of  Mr.  Havelock  Ellis  and 
others  had  made  a  few  of  his  plays  known  to 
the  reader.  As  long  since  as  1880,  a  very  free 
version  of  "A  Doll's  House,"  under  the  title 
"Breaking  a  Butterfly,"  had  been  made  for 
the  theatre  by  Mr.  Henry  Arthur  Jones  and 
a  collaborator.  The  French  critic,  M.  Augus- 
tin  Filon,  in  his  book,  "The  English  Stage" 
(1897),  ventures  a  guess  that  the  Ibsen 
brand  of  realism  will  be  found  to  agree 
better  with  the  English  character  than  the 
article  furnished  by  Dumas  fils  and  other 
French  dramatists ;  and  he  even  suggests  the 
somewhat  fantastic  theory  that  an  audience 
of  the  fellow  countrymen  of  Darwin  and 
Huxley  will  listen  with  a  peculiar  sympathy 
to  such  a  play  as  "Ghosts,"  in  which  the  doc- 
trine of  heredity  is  so  forcibly  preached. 
Ibsen's  masterly  construction,  quite  as  much 
as  his  ideas,  has  been  studied  with  advantage 
by  our  dramatists.  Thus  it  is  thought  that 
Pinero,  who  has  shown,  in  general,  very  little 
143 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
of  Ibsen's  influence,  may  have  taken  a  hint 
from  him  in  the  inconclusive  ending  of  "The 
Notorious  Mrs.  Ebbsmith."  The  inconclusive 
ending  is  a  practice — perhaps  a  principle — 
of  the  latest  realistic  schools  of  drama  and 
fiction.  Life,  they  contend,  has  no  artificial 
closes,  but  flows  continually  on,  and  a  play 
is  only  a  "bleeding  slice  of  life."  In  old 
tragedy,  death  is  the  end.  "Troilus  and  Cres- 
sida"  is  Shakespeare's  only  episodical  trag- 
edy, the  only  one  in  which  the  protagonist  is 
not  killed — and,  perhaps  for  that  reason,  the 
quarto  title-page  describes  it  as  a  comedy. 
But  in  Ibsenite  drama  the  hero  or  heroine 
does  not  always  die.  Sometimes  he  or  she  goes 
away,  or  sometimes  just  accepts  the  situa- 
tion and  stays  on.  The  sound  of  the  door 
shutting  in  "A  Doll's  House"  tells  us  that 
Nora  has  gone  out  into  the  world  to  begin  a 
new  career.  In  "Mrs.  Warren's  Profession," 
one  of  Shaw's  strongest  "Plays  Unpleasant," 
— so  unpleasant  that  its  production  on  the 
boards  was  forbidden  by  the  Lord  Chamber- 
lain,— when  Vivie  discovers  what  her  mother's 
profession  is,  and  where  the  money  comes  from 
that  sent  her  to  Newnham,  she  does  nothing 
melodramatic,  but  simply  utilizes  her  mathe- 
matical education  by  entering  an  actuary's 
office.  The  curtain  falls  to  the  stage  direc- 
tion, "Then  she  goes  at  her  work  with  a 
144 


THE  ENGLISH  DRAMA 

plunge,   and   soon  becomes  absorbed  in  her 
figures." 

Shaw  is  a  convinced  Ibsenite  and  took  up 
the  foils  for  the  master  in  a  series  of  articles 
in  the  Saturday  Review  in  1895.  The  new 
woman,  the  emancipated  woman  so  much  in 
evidence  in  Ibsen,  goes  in  and  out  through 
Shaw's  plays,  short-skirted,  cigarette-smok- 
ing, a  business  woman  with  no  nonsense  about 
her,  a  good  fellow,  calling  her  girl  friends  by 
their  last  names  and  treating  male  associates 
with  a  brusque  camaraderie.  But,  as  he  satir- 
izes everything,  himself  included,  he  has  his 
laugh  at  the  Ibsen  cult  in  "The  Philanderer." 
There  is  an  Ibsen  Club,  with  a  bust  of  the 
Norse  divinity  over  the  library  mantelpiece. 
One  of  the  rules  is  that  no  womanly  woman 
is  to  be  admitted.  At  the  first  symptom  of 
womanliness,  a  woman  forfeits  her  member- 
ship. What  Shaw  chiefly  shares  with  Ibsen  is 
his  impatience  of  heroics,  cant,  social  lies, 
respectable  prejudices,  the  conventions  of  a 
traditional  morality.  Face  facts,  call  things 
by  their  names,  drag  the  skeleton  out  of  the 
closet.  Ibsen  brushes  these  cobwebs  aside 
with  a  grave  logic  and  a  savage  contempt ; 
he  makes  their  hollow  unreality  the  source  of 
tragic  wrong.  But  Shaw's  lighter  tempera- 
ment is  wholly  that  of  the  comic  artist,  and 
he  attacks  cant  with  the  weapons  of  irony. 
His  favorite  characters  are  audacious,  irrev- 
145 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

erent  young  men  and  women,  without  illu- 
sions and  incapable  of  being  shocked,  but 
delighting  in  shocking  their  elders.  The 
clergy  are  the  professional  trustees  of  this 
conventional  morality  and  are  treated  by 
Ibsen  and  Shaw  with  scant  respect.  Mrs. 
Alving  in  "Ghosts"  shows  the  same  contemp- 
tuous toleration  of  the  scruples  of  the  rabbit- 
like Parson  Manders,  as  Candida  shows  for 
her  clerical  husband's  preaching  and  phrase- 
making.  The  present  season  has  witnessed  the 
first  appearance  on  the  American  stage  of 
Mr.  Shaw's  gayest  farce  comedy,  "You 
Never  Can  Tell." 

I  asked  an  actor,  a  university  graduate, 
what  he  thought  of  the  future  of  verse  drama 
in  acted  plays.  He  inclined  to  believe  that  its 
day  had  gone  by,  even  in  tragedy;  and  that 
the  language  of  the  modern  serious  drama 
would  be  prose,  colloquial,  never  stilted  (as 
it  was  in  "George  Barnwell"  and  "Riche- 
lieu"), but  rising,  when  necessary,  into  elo- 
quence and  a  kind  of  unmetrical  poetry.  He 
instanced  several  passages  in  Pinero's 
"Sweet  Lavender"  and  later  plays.  Still,  the 
blank-verse  tradition  dies  hard.  Probably  the 
leading  representative  of  ideal  or  poetic 
drama  in  the  contemporary  theatre  is 
Stephen  Phillips,  whose  "Paolo  and  Fran- 
cesca"  (1899),  "Herod"  (1900),  and 
"Ulysses"  (1902)  have  all  been  shown  upon 
146 


I 


THE  ENGLISH  DRAMA 

the  boards  and  highly  acclamied,  at  least  by 
the  critics.  There  is  no  doubt  that  they  are 
fine  dramatic  poems  with  many  passages  of 
delicate,  and  some  of  noble,  beauty.  But 
whether  they  are  anything  more  than  excel- 
lent closet  drama  is  not  yet  proved.  Mr. 
Phillips's  experience  as  an  actor  has  given 
him  a  practical  knowledge  of  technic ;  and  it 
may  be  conceded  that  his  plays  are  nearer 
the  requirements  of  the  stage  than  Brown- 
ing's or  Tennyson's.  They  are  simple,  as 
Browning's  are  not;  and  they  have  quick 
movement,  where  Tennyson's  are  lumbering. 
Neither  is  it  much  against  them  that  their 
subjects  are  antique,  taken  from  Dante, 
Josephus,  and  Homer.  But  they  appear  to 
me  poetically  rather  than  dramatically  imag- 
ined. Shakespeare  and  Racine  dealt  with 
remote  or  antique  life;  yet,  each  in  his  own 
way  modernized  and  realized  it.  It  is  a  hack- 
neyed observation  that  Racine's  Greeks, 
Romans,  and  Turks  are  French  gentlemen 
and  ladies  of  the  court  of  Louis  XIV.  Shake- 
speare's Homeric  heroes  are  very  un- 
Homeric.  There  is  little  in  either  of  local 
color  or  historical  perspective :  there  is  in 
both  a  fulness  of  handling,  an  explication  of 
sentiments  and  characters.  The  people  are 
able  talkers  and  reasoners.  Mr.  Phillips's 
method  is  implicit,  and  the  atmosphere  of 
things  old  and  foreign  is  kept,  the  distance 
147 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

which  lends  enchantment  to  mediaeval  Italy, 
or  the  later  Roman  Empire,  or  the  heroic  age. 
It  is  as  if  the  "Idylls  of  the  King"  were 
dramatized, — as,  indeed,  "Elaine"  was  drama- 
tized for  one  of  the  New  York  playhouses 
by  George  Lathrop, — retaining  all  their  ro- 
mantic charm  and  all  their  dramatic  un- 
reality. 

StiU,  there  are  moments  of  genuine  dra- 
matic passion  in  all  three  of  these  plays :  in 
"Herod,"  for  instance,  where  Mariamne 
acknowledges  to  the  tetrarch  that  her  love 
for  him  is  dead.  And  in  "Ulysses,"  Telem- 
achus's  recognition  of  his  father  moves  one 
very  deeply,  producing  its  impression,  too, 
by  a  few  speeches  in  a  perfectly  simple,  un- 
embroidered  diction,  by  means  properly 
scenic,  not  poetic  like  Tennyson's.  "Ulysses" 
seems  the  best  of  Mr.  Phillips's  pieces,  more 
loosely  built  than  the  others,  but  of  more 
varied  interest  and  more  lifelike.  The  gods 
speak  in  rhyme  and  the  human  characters  in 
blank  verse,  while  some  of  the  more  familiar 
dialogue  is  in  prose;  Ctesippus,  an  elderly 
wooer  of  Penelope,  is  a  comic  figure;  and 
there  is  a  good  deal  of  rough,  natural  fooling 
among  the  wooers,  shepherds,  and  maids  in 
the  great  hall  of  Ithaca.  In  its  use  of  popular 
elements  and  its  romantic  freedom  of  han- 
dling, the  play  contrasts  with  Robert 
Bridges's  "The  Return  of  Ulysses,"  which 
148 


THE  ENGLISH  DRAMA 

Mr.  Yeats  praises  for  its  "classical  gravity" 
and  "lyric  and  meditative"  quality.  Mr. 
Phillips  opens  his  scene  on  Calypso's  island, 
and  brings  his  wandering  hero  home  only 
after  making  him  descend  to  the  shades.  His 
Ulysses  shoots  the  wooers  in  full  view  of  the 
audience.  In  Mr.  Bridges's  play  the  action 
begins  in  Ithaca,  the  unities  of  time  and  place 
are  observed,  and  so  is  dramatic  decency.  The 
wooers  are  slain  outside,  and  their  slaying  is 
described  to  Penelope  by  a  handmaid  who 
sees  it  from  the  door.  Yet,  upon  the  whole, 
Mr.  Phillips's  constructive  formula  is  more 
Sophoclean  than  Shakespearean.  Not  that 
he  adheres  to  the  external  conventions  of 
Attic  tragedy,  the  chorus,  the  unities,  etc., 
like  Matthew  Arnold  in  "Merope" ;  but  that 
his  plot  evolution  exhibits  the  straight,  slen- 
der line  of  Sophocles,  rather  than  the  rich 
composite  pattern  of  Elizabethan  tragi- 
comedy. I  have  been  told  by  some  who  saw 
"Ulysses"  played,  that  the  descent  ad  inferos 
was  grotesque  in  effect.  But  "Paolo  and  Fran- 
cesca"  might  have  gained  from  an  infusion 
of  grotesque.  D'Annunzio's  almost  precisely 
contemporary  version  of  the  immortal  tale 
has  just  the  solid,  materialistic  treatment 
which  makes  you  feel  the  brutal  realities  of 
mediaeval  life,  the  gross  soil  in  which  this 
"lily  of  Tartarus"  found  root.  Mr.  Phillips's 
latest  piece,  "The  Sin  of  David,"  a  tragedy 
149 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

of  Cromwell's   England,   is  now  in   its   first 
season. 

Among  the  most  interesting  of  recent 
dramatic  contributions  are  William  Bulter 
Yeats's  "Plays  for  an  Irish  Theatre."  Mr. 
Yeats's  recent  visit  to  this  country  is  still 
fresh  in  recollection ;  and  doubtless  many  of 
my  readers  have  seen  his  beautiful  little  fairy 
piece,  "The  Land  of  Heart's  Desire."  Prob- 
ably allegory,  or  at  least  symbolism,  is  the 
only  form  in  which  the  supernatural  has  any 
chance  in  modern  drama.  The  old-fashioned 
ghost  is  too  robust  an  apparition  to  produce 
in  a  sceptical  generation  that  "willing  sus- 
pension of  disbelief"  which,  says  Coleridge, 
constitutes  dramatic  illusion.  Hamlet's 
father  talks  too  much;  and  the  ghosts  in 
"Richard  III"  are  so  sociable  a  company  as 
to  quite  keep  each  other  in  countenance.  The 
best  ghost  in  Shakespeare  is  Banquo's,  which 
is  invisible — a  mere  "clot  on  the  brain" — and 
has  no  "lines"  to  speak.  The  elves  in  "A  Mid- 
summer Night's  Dream"  and  the  elemental 
spirits  in  "The  Tempest"  are  nothing  but 
machinery.  The  other  world  is  not  the  sub- 
ject of  the  play.  Hauptmann's  "Die  Ver- 
sunkene  Glocke"  is  symbolism,  and  so  is  "The 
Land  of  Heart's  Desire."  Maeterlinck's  "Les 
Aveugles*^  and  Yeats's  "Cathleen  Ni  Hooli- 
han"  are  more  formally  allegorical.  The  poor 
old  woman,  in  the  latter,  who  takes  the  bride- 
150 


THE  ENGLISH  DRAMA 

groom  from  his  bride,  is  Ireland,  from  whom 
strangers  have  taken  her  "four  beautiful 
green  fields" — the  ancient  kingdoms  of  Mun- 
ster,  Leinster,  Ulster,  and  Connaught. 

These  Irish  plays,  indeed,  are  the  nearest 
thing  we  have  to  the  work  of  the  Belgian 
symbolist,  to  dramas  like  "Les  Aveugles"  and 
"L'lntruse."  And,  as  in  those,  the  people  are 
peasants,  and  the  dialogue  is  homely  prose. 
No  brogue :  only  a  few  idioms  and  sometimes 
not  even  that,  the  whole  being  supposed  to  be 
a  translation  from  the  Gaelic  into  standard 
English.  Maeterlinck's  dramas  have  been 
played  on  many  theatres.  Mr.  William  Sharp, 
who  twice  -saw  "Ulntruse"  at  Paris,  found  it 
much  less  impressive  in  the  acting  than  in 
the  reading,  and  his  experience  was  not  singu- 
lar. As  for  the  more  romantic  pieces,  like 
"Les  Sept  Princesses"  and  "Aglavaine  et 
Selysette,"  they  are  about  as  shadowy  as  one 
of  Tieck's  tales.  Those  who  saw  Mrs.  Patrick 
Campbell  in  "PelUas  et  Melisande"  will 
doubtless  agree  that  these  dreamlike  poems 
are  hurt  by  representation.  It  may  be  that 
Maeterlinck,  like  Baudelaire,  has  invented  a 
new  shudder.  But  the  matinee  audiences 
laughed  at  many  things  which  had  thrilled 
the  closet  reader.  _ 

Yeats's  tragedies,  like  Maeterlinck's,  be- 
long to  the  drame  intime,  the  theatre  sta- 
tique.  The  popular  drama — what  Yeats  calls 
161 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

the  "theatre  of  commerce" — is  dynamic.  The 
true  theatre  is  the  human  will,  Brunetiere 
shows  by  an  analysis  of  any  one  of  Racine's 
plays — say  "Andromaque" — how  the  action 
moves  forward  by  a  series  of  decisions.  But 
Maeterlinck's  people  are  completely  passive: 
they  suffer:  they  do  not  act,  but  are  acted 
upon  by  the  unearthly  powers  of  which  they 
are  the  sport.  Yeats's  plays,  too,  are  "plays 
for  marionettes,"  spectral  puppet-shows  of 
the  Celtic  twilight.  True,  his  characters  do 
make  choices :  the  young  wife  in  "The  Land 
of  Heart's  Desire,"  the  bridegroom  in  "Cath- 
leen  Ni  Hoolihan"  make  choices,  but  their 
apparently  free  will  is  supernaturally  influ- 
enced. The  action  is  in  two  worlds.  In  an- 
tique tragedy,  too,  man  is  notoriously  the 
puppet  of  fate;  but,  though  he  acts  in  igno- 
rance of  the  end  to  which  destiny  is  shaping 
his  deed,  he  acts  with  vigorous  self-deter- 
mination. There  is  nothing  dreamlike  about 
Orestes  or  Oedipus  or  Antigone. 

It  is  said  that  the  plays  of  another  Irish- 
man, Oscar  Wilde,  are  now  great  favorites 
in  Germany:  "Salome,"  in  particular,  and 
"Lady  Windermere's  Fan"  and  "A  Woman 
of  No  Importance"  {"Eine  unbedeutende 
Frau") .  This  is  rather  surprising  in  the  case 
of  the  last  two,  which  are  society  dramas 
with  little  action  and  an  excess  of  cynical  wit 
in  the  dialogue.  It  is  hard  to  understand  how 
152 


THE  ENGLISH  DRAMA 
the  unremitting  fire  of  repartee,  paradox, 
and  "reversed  epigram"  in  such  a  piece  as 
"Lady  Windermere's  Fan,"  the  nearest  re- 
cent equivalent  of  Congreve  comedy — can 
survive  translation  or  please  the  German 
public. 

This  "new  drama"  is  very  new  indeed.  In 
1882,  William  Archer,  the  translator  of  Ib- 
sen, published  his  book,  "English  Dramatists 
of  To-day,"  in  the  introduction  to  which  he 
acknowledged  that  the  English  literary 
drama  did  not  exist.  "I  should  like  to  see  in 
England,"  he  wrote,  "a  body  of  playwrights 
whose  works  are  not  only  acted,  but  printed 
and  read."  Nine  years  later,  Henry  Arthur 
Jones,  in  the  preface  to  his  printed  play, 
"Saints  and  Sinners,"  denied  that  there  was 
any  relation  between  English  literature  and 
the  modern  English  drama.  A  few  years 
later  still,  in  his  introduction  to  the  English 
translation  of  M.  Filon's  book,  "The  English 
Stage"  (1897),  Mr.  Jones  is  more  hopeful. 
"If  any  one  will  take  the  trouble,"  he  writes, 
"to  examine  the  leading  English  plays  of  the 
last  ten  years,  and  will  compare  them  with 
the  serious  plays  of  our  country  during  the 
last  three  centuries,  I  shall  be  mistaken  if  he 
will  not  find  evidence  of  the  beginnings  of  an 
English  drama  of  greater  import  and  vital- 
ity, and  of  wider  aim,  than  any  school  of 
153 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

drama  the  English  theatre  has  known  since 
the  Elizabethans." 

In  his  book  on  "The  Renaissance  of  the 
Drama,"  and  in  many  other  places,  Mr. 
Jones  has  pleaded  for  a  theatre  which  should 
faithfully  reflect  contemporary  life;  and  in 
his  own  plays  he  has  endeavored  to  furnish 
examples  of  what  such  a  drama  should  be. 
His  first  printed  piece,  "Saints  and  Sinners" 
(exhibited  in  1884),  was  hardly  literature, 
and  did  not  stamp  its  author  as  a  first-class 
talent.  It  is  a  seduction  play  of  the  familiar 
type,  with  a  set  of  stock  characters :  the  vil- 
lain; the  forsaken  maid;  the  steadfast  lover 
who  comes  back  from  Australia  with  a  for- 
tune in  the  nick  of  time;  the  pere  noble,  a 
country  clergyman  straight  out  of  "The 
Vicar  of  Wakefield";  and  a  pair  of  hypo- 
critical deacons  in  a  dissenting  chapel — very 
much  overdone,  pace  Matthew  Arnold,  who 
complimented  Mr.  Jones  on  those  concrete 
examples  of  middle-class  Philistinism,  with  its 
alliterative  mixture  of  business  and  bethels. 
Mr.  Jones,  like  Mr.  Shaw,  is  true  to  the 
tradition  of  the  stage  in  being  fiercely  anti- 
Puritan,  and  wastes  many  words  in  his  pref- 
aces in  vindicating  the  right  of  the  theatre 
to  deal  with  religious  hypocrisy;  as  if  Tar- 
tuffe  and  Tribulation  Wholesome  had  not 
been  familiar  comedy  heroes  for  nearly  three 
hundred  years ! 

154 


THE  ENGLISH  DRAMA 

This  dramatist  served  his  apprenticeship 
in  melodrama,  as  Pinero  did  in  farce;  and 
there  are  signs  of  the  difference  in  his  greater 
seriousness,  or  heaviness.  Indeed,  an  honest 
feeling  and  an  earnest  purpose  are  among  his 
best  qualities.  M.  Filon  thinks  him  the  most 
English  of  contemporary  writers  for  the 
stage.  And,  as  Pinero's  art  has  gained  in 
depth,  Jones's  has  gained  in  lightness.  Crude 
at  first,  without  complexity  or  shading  in  his 
character-drawing,  without  much  art  in 
comic  dialogue  or  much  charm  and  distinc- 
tion in  serious,  he  has  advanced  steadily  in 
grasp  and  skill  and  sureness  of  touch,  and 
stands  to-day  in  the  front  rank  of  modern 
British  dramatists.  "The  Crusaders,"  "The 
Case  ^of  Rebellious  Susan,"  "The  Masquer- 
aders',"  "Judah,"  "The  Liars,"  are  all  good 
plays — or,  at  least  plays  with  good  features 
— and  certainly  fall  within  the  line  which 
divides  literary  drama  from  the  mere  stage 
play.  "Judah,"  for  instance,  is  a  solidly 
built  piece,  with  two  or  three  strong  situa- 
tions. The  heroine  is  a  fasting  girl  and  mirac- 
ulous healer,  a  subject  of  a  kind  which 
Hawthorne  often  chose;  or  reminding  one  of 
Mr.  Howells's  charlatans  in  "The  Undis- 
covered Country"  and  Mr.  James's  in  "The 
Bostonians."  The  characterization  of  the 
leading  persons  is  sound,  and  there  is  a  brace 
of  very  diverting  broad  comedy  figures,  a 
155 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
male  and  a  female  scientific  prig.  They  are 
slightly  caricatured — Jones  is  still  a  little 
heavy-handed — but  the  theatre  must  over- 
accentuate  now  and  again,  just  as  actresses 
must  rouge. 

In  this  play  and  in  "The  Crusaders," 
social  satire  is  successfully  essayed  at  the 
expense  of  prevailing  fads,  such  as  fashion- 
able philanthropy,  slumming  parties,  neigh- 
borhood guilds,  and  the  like.  There  is  a 
woman  in  "The  Crusaders," — a  campaigner, 
a  steamboat,  a  specimen  of  the  loud,  ener- 
getic, public,  organizing,  speech-making, 
committee  and  platform,  subscription-solicit- 
ing woman, — nearly  as  good  as  anything  in 
our  best  fiction.  Mr.  Joseph  Knight,  who 
writes  a  preface  to  "Judah"  (first  put^on  at 
the  Shaftesbury  Theatre,  London,  1890), 
compares  its  scientific  faddists  with  the 
women  who  swarm  to  chemistry  and  biology 
lectures  in  that  favorite  Parisian  comedy, 
"Le  monde  oil  Von  s^ennuie."  There  is  capital 
satire  of  the  downright  kind  in  these  plays, 
but  surely  it  is  dangerous  to  suggest  com- 
parison with  the  gay  irony,  the  courtly 
grace,  the  dash  and  sparkle  of  Pailleron's 
little  masterpiece.  There  are  no  such  winged 
shafts  in  any  English  quiver.  Upon  the  whole, 
"The  Liars"  seems  to  me  the  best  comedy  of 
Mr,  Jones's  that  I  have  read, — I  have  not 
read  them  all, — the  most  evenly  sustained  at 
156 


THE  ENGLISH  DRAMA 
every  point  of  character  and  incident,  a  fine 
piece  of  work  in  both  invention  and  construc- 
tion. The  subject,  however,  is  of  that  dis- 
agreeable variety  which  the  English  drama 
has  so  often  borrowed  from  the  French,  the 
rescue  of  a  married  woman  from  a  compro- 
mising position,  by  a  comic  conspiracy  in 
her  favor. 

The  Puritans  have  always  been  half-way 
right  in  their  opposition  to  the  theatre.  The 
drama,  in  the  abstract  and  as  a  form  of 
literature,  is  of  an  ancient  house  and  a  noble. 
But  the  professional  stage  tends  naturally  to 
corruption,  and  taints  what  it  receives.  The 
world  pictured  in  these  contemporary  society 
plays — or  in  many  of  them — we  are  unwilling 
to  accept  as  typical.  Its  fashion  is  fast  and 
not  seldom  vulgar.  It  is  a  vicious  democracy 
in  which  divorces  are  frequent  and  the 
"woman  with  a  past"  is  the  usual  heroine ;  in 
which  rowdy  peers  mingle  oddly  with  mani- 
curists, clairvoyants,  barmaids,  adventur- 
esses, comic  actresses,  faith-healers,  etc.,  and 
the  contact  between  high  life  and  low  life  has 
commonly  disreputable  motives.  Surely  this 
is  not  English  life,  as  we  know  it  from  the 
best  English  fiction.  And,  if  the  drama  is  to 
take  permanent  rank  with  the  novel,  it  must 
redistribute  its  emphasis. 


157 


SHERIDAN 

WITH  the  exception  of  Goldsmith's 
comedy,  "She  Stoops  to  Conquer," 
the  only  eighteenth  century  plays  that  still 
keep  the  stage  are  Sheridan's  three,  "The 
Rivals,"  "The  Critic,"  and  "The  School  for 
Scandal."  Once  in  a  while,  to  be  sure,  a  single 
piece  by  one  or  another  of  Goldsmith's  and 
Sheridan's  contemporaries  makes  a  brief  re- 
appearance in  the  modern  theatre.  I  have 
seen  Goldsmith's  earlier  and  inferior  comedy, 
"The  Good-natured  Man,"  as  well  as  Towne- 
ley's  farce,  "High  Life  Below  Stairs,"  both 
given  by  amateurs ;  and  I  have  seen  Col- 
man's  "Heir  at  Law"  (1797)  acted  by  pro- 
fessionals. Doubtless  other  eighteenth  cen- 
tury plays,  such  as  Cumberland's  "West 
Indian"  and  Holcroft's  "Road  to  Ruin,"  are 
occasionally  revived  and  run  for  a  few  nights. 
Sometimes  this  happens  even  to  an  earlier 
piece,  such  as  Farquhar's  "Beaux'  Strata- 
gem" (1707),  which  retained  its  popularity 
all  through  the  eighteenth  century.  But 
things  of  this  sort,  though  listened  to  with  a 
certain  respectful  attention,  are  plainly  tol- 
erated as  interesting  literary  survivals,  like 
159 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
an    old    miracle   or   morality   play,   say   the 
"Secunda  Pastorum"  or  "Everyman,"  revisit- 
ing the  glimpses  of  the  moon.  They  do  not 
belong  to  the  repertoire. 

Sheridan's  plays,  on  the  other  hand,  have 
never  lost  their  popularity  as  acting  dramas. 
"The  School  for  Scandal"  has  been  played 
oftener  than  any  other  English  play  outside 
of  Shakespeare;  and  "The  Rivals"  is  not  far 
behind  it.  Even  "The  Critic,"  which  is  a  bur- 
lesque and  depends  for  its  effect  not  upon 
plot  and  character  but  upon  the  sheer  wit 
of  the  dialogue  and  the  absurdity  of  the 
situations — even  "The  Critic"  continues  to 
be  presented  both  at  private  theatricals  and 
upon  the  public  stage,  and  seldom  fails  to 
amuse.  There  is  no  better  proof  of  Sheridan's 
extraordinary  dramatic  aptitude  than  is 
afforded  by  a  comparison  of  "The  Critic" 
with  its  model,  Buckingham's  "Rehearsal." 
To  Boswell's  question  why  "The  Rehearsal" 
was  no  longer  played.  Dr.  Johnson  answered, 
"Sir,  it  had  not  wit  enough  to  keep  it  sweet" ; 
then  paused  and  added  in  good  Johnsonese, 
*'it  had  not  vitality  sufficient  to  preserve  it 
from  putrefaction."  "The  Rehearsal"  did 
have  plenty  of  wit,  but  it  was  of  the  kind 
which  depends  for  its  success  upon  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  tragedies  it  burlesqued.  These 
are  forgotten,  and  so  "The  Rehearsal"  is 
dead.  But  "The  Critic"  is  not  only  very 
160 


SHERIDAN 

much  brighter,  but  it  satirizes  high  tragedy 
in  general  and  not  a  temporary  literary 
fashion  or  a  particular  class  of  tragedy :  and, 
therefore,  nearly  a  century  and  a  half  after 
its  first  performance,  "The  Critic"  is  still 
very  much  alive.  The  enduring  favor  which 
Sheridan's  plays  have  won  must  signify  one 
of  two  things:  either  that  they  touch  the 
springs  of  universal  comedy,  la  comedie 
humaine — the  human  comedy,  as  Balzac 
calls  it:  go  down  to  the  deep  source  of 
laughter,  which  is  also  the  fountain  of  tears ; 
or  else  that,  whatever  of  shallowness  or  arti- 
ficiality their  picture  of  life  may  have,  their 
cleverness  and  artistic  cunning  are  such  that 
they  keep  their  freshness  after  one  hundred 
and  fifty  years.  Such  is  the  antiseptic 
power  of  art. 

The  latter,  I  think,  is  Sheridan's  case.  His 
quality  was  not  genius,  but  talent,  yet  talent 
raised  to  a  very  high  power.  His  comedy 
lacks  the  depth  and  mellowness  of  the  very 
greatest  comedy.  His  place  is  not  among  the 
supreme  creative  humorists,  Shakespeare, 
Cervantes,  Aristophanes,  Moliere.  Taine 
says  that  in  Sheridan  all  is  brilliant,  but  that 
the  metal  is  not  his  own,  nor  is  it  always  of 
the  best  quality.  Yet  he  acknowledges  the 
wonderful  vivacity  of  the  dialogue,  and  the 
animated  movement  of  every  scene  and  of 
the  play  as  a  whole.  Sheridan,  in  truth,  was 
161 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
inventive  rather  than  original.  His  art  was 
eclectic,  derivative,  but  his  skill  in  putting 
together  his  materials  was  unfailing.  He 
wrote  the  comedy  of  manners :  not  the 
comedy  of  character.  In  the  greatest  comedy, 
in  "The  Merchant  of  Venice,"  or  "Le  Misan- 
thrope," or  "Peer  Gynt"  there  is  poetry,  or 
at  least  there  is  seriousness.  But  in  the 
comedy  of  manners,  or  in  what  is  called  clas- 
sical comedy,  i.e.,  pure,  unmixed  comedy,  the 
purpose  is  merely  to  amuse. 

He  never  drives  his  plowshare  through  the 
crust  of  good  society  into  the  substratum  of 
universal  ideas.  We  are  not  to  look  in  the 
comedy  of  manners  for  wisdom  and  far- 
reaching  thoughts;  nor  yet  for  profound, 
vital,  subtle  studies  of  human  nature.  Sheri- 
dan's comedies  are  the  sparkling  foam  on  the 
crest  of  the  wave:  the  bright,  consummate 
flower  of  high  life :  finished  specimens  of  the 
playwright's  art:  not  great  dramatic  works. 

Yet  when  all  deductions  have  been  made, 
Sheridan's  is  a  most  dazzling  figure.  The 
brilliancy  and  versatility  of  his  talents  were 
indeed  amazing.  Byron  said:  "Whatsoever 
Sheridan  has  done,  or  chosen  to  do,  has  been 
par  excellence  always  the  best  of  its  kind. 
He  has  written  the  best  comedy,  the  best 
drama,  the  best  farce  and  the  best  address ; 
and,  to  crown  all,  delivered  the  very  best  ora- 
tion ever  conceived  or  heard  in  this  country." 
162 


SHERIDAN 
By  the  best  comedy  Byron  means  "The 
School  for  Scandal";  the  best  drama  was 
"The  Duenna,"  an  opera  or  music  drama; 
the  best  address  was  the  monologue  on  Gar- 
rick;  and  the  best  oration  was  the  famous 
speech  on  the  Begums  of  Oude  in  the  im- 
peachment proceedings  against  Warren  Has- 
tings :  a  speech  which  held  the  attention  of 
the  House  of  Commons  for  over  five  hours  at 
a  stretch,  and  was  universally  acknowledged 
to  have  outdone  the  most  eloquent  efforts  of 
Burke  and  Pitt  and  Fox, 

Sheridan  came  naturally  by  his  aptitude 
for  the  theatre.  His  father  was  an  actor  and 
declamation  master  and  had  been  manager 
of  the  Theatre  Royal  in  Dublin.  His  mother 
had  written  novels  and  plays.  Her  unfinished 
comedy,  "A  Journey  to  Bath,"  furnished  a 
few  hints  towards  "The  Rivals,"  the  scene  of 
which,  you  will  remember,  is  at  Bath,  the 
fashionable  watering  place  which  figures  so 
largely  in  eighteenth  century  letters :  in  Smol- 
lett's novel,  "Humphrey  Clinker,"  in  Horace 
Walpole's  correspondence,  in  Anstey's  satire, 
"The  New  Bath  Guide,"  and  in  Goldsmith's 
life  of  Beau  Nash,  the  King  of  the  Pump- 
room.  Histrionic  and  even  dramatic  ability 
has  been  constantly  inherited.  There  are 
families  of  actors,  like  the  Kembles  and  the 
Booths ;  and  it  is  noteworthy  how  large  a 
proportion  of  our  dramatic  authors  have 
163 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
been  actors,  or  in  practical  touch  with  the 
stage:  Marlowe,  Greene,  Jonson,  Shake- 
speare, Otway,  Lee,  Gibber,  the  Colmans, 
father  and  son,  Macklin,  Garrick,  Foote, 
Knowles,  Boucicault,  Robertson,  Tom  Tay- 
lor, Pinero,  Stephen  Phillips.  These  names 
by  no  means  exhaust  the  list  of  those  who 
have  both  written  and  acted  plays.  Sheri- 
dan's career  was  full  of  adventure.  He 
eloped  from  Bath  with  a  beautiful  girl  of 
eighteen,  a  concert  singer,  daughter  of  Lin- 
ley,  the  musical  composer,  and  was  married 
to  her  in  France.  In  the  course  of  this  affair 
he  fought  two  duels,  in  one  of  which  he  was 
dangerously  wounded.  Now  what  can  be 
more  romantic  than  a  duel  and  an  elopement.'' 
Yet  notice  how  the  identical  adventures 
which  romance  uses  in  one  way,  classical 
comedy  uses  in  quite  another.  These  per- 
sonal experiences  doubtless  suggested  some 
of  the  incidents  in  "The  Rivals" ;  but  in  that 
comedy  the  projected  duel  and  the  projected 
elopement  end  in  farce,  and  common  sense 
carries  it  over  romance,  which  it  is  the  whole 
object  of  the  play  to  make  fun  of,  as  it  is 
embodied  in  the  person  of  Miss  Lydia  Lan- 
guish. 

It  was  Sheridan  who  said  that  easy  writ- 
ing    was     sometimes     very     hard     reading. 
Nevertheless,  whatever  he  did  had  the  air  of 
being   dashed   off    carelessly.    All   his   plays 
164 


SHERIDAN 
were  written  before  he  was  thirty.  He  was  a 
man  of  the  world,  who  was  only  incidentally 
a  man  of  letters.  He  sat  thirty  years  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  was  Under  Secretary  for 
Foreign  Affairs  under  Fox,  and  Secretary 
to  the  Treasury  under  the  coalition  ministry. 
He  associated  intimately  with  that  royal 
fribble,  the  Prince  Regent,  and  the  whole 
dynasty  of  dandies,  and  became,  as  Thack- 
eray said  of  his  forerunner,  Congreve,  a 
tremendous  swell,  but  on  a  much  slenderer 
capital.  It  is  one  of  the  puzzles  of  Sheridan's 
biography  where  he  got  the  money  to  pay 
for  Drury  Lane  Theatre,  of  which  he  became 
manager  and  lessee.  He  was  a  shining  figure 
in  the  world  of  sport  and  the  world  of  poli- 
tics, as  well  as  in  the  world  of  literature  and 
the  drama.  He  had  the  sanguine,  improvident 
temperament,  and  the  irregular,  procrasti- 
nating habits  of  work  which  are  popularly 
associated  with  genius.  The  story  is  told  that 
the  fifth  act  of  "The  School  for  Scandal"  was 
still  unwritten  while  the  earlier  acts  were 
being  rehearsed  for  the  first  performance; 
and  that  Sheridan's  friends  locked  him  up 
in  a  room  with  pen,  ink,  and  paper,  and  a 
bottle  of  claret,  and  would  not  let  him  out 
till  he  had  finished  the  play.  This  anecdote  is 
not,  I  believe,  authentic;  but  it  shows  the 
current  impression  of  his  irresponsible  ways. 
His  reckless  expenses,  his  betting  and  gam- 
165 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
bling  debts  resulted  in  his  arrest  and  im- 
prisonment, and  writs  were  served  upon  him 
in  his  last  illness.  I  do  not  think  that  Sheri- 
dan affected  a  contempt  for  the  profession  of 
letters ;  but  there  was  perhaps  a  touch  of 
affectation  in  his  rather  degage  attitude 
toward  his  own  performances.  It  is  an  atti- 
tude not  uncommon  in  literary  men  who  are 
also — like  Congreve — "tremendous  swells." 
"I  hate  your  authors  who  are  all  author," 
wrote  Byron,  who  was  himself  a  bit  of  a  snob. 
When  Voltaire  called  upon  Congreve,  the 
latter  disclaimed  the  character  of  author, 
and  said  he  was  merely  a  private  gentleman, 
who  wrote  for  his  own  amusement.  "If  you 
were  merely  a  private  gentleman,"  replied 
Voltaire,  "I  would  not  have  thought  it  worth 
while  to  come  to  see  you." 

Dramatic  masterpieces  are  not  tossed  off 
lightly  from  the  nib  of  the  pen;  and  doubt- 
less Sheridan  worked  harder  at  his  plays 
than  he  chose  to  have  the  public  know  and 
was  not  really  one  of  that  "mob  of  gentle- 
men who  write  with  ease"  at  whom  Pope 
sneers.  Byron  and  many  others  testify  to  the 
coruscating  wit  of  his  conversation ;  and  it  is 
well  known  that  he  did  not  waste  his  good 
things,  but  put  them  down  in  his  notebooks 
and  worked  them  up  to  a  high  polish  in  the 
dialogue  of  his  plays.  It  is  noticeable  how 
thriftily  he  leads  up  to  his  jokes,  laying  little 
^66 


SHERIDAN 
traps  for  his  speakers  to  fall  into.  Thus  in 
"The  Rivals,"  where  Faulkland  is  complain- 
ing to  Captain  Absolute  about  Julia's  heart- 
less high  spirits  in  her  lover's  absence,  he 
appeals  to  his  friend  to  mark  the  contrast: 

"Why  Jack,  have  I  been  the  joy  and  spirit 
of  the  company?" 

"No,  indeed,  you  have  not,"  acknowledges 
the  Captain. 

"Have  /  been  lively  and  entertaining.'"' 
asks  Faulkland. 

"0,  upon  my  word,  I  acquit  you,"  answers 
his  friend. 

"Have  I  been  full  of  wit  and  humor.'"'  pur- 
sues the  jealous  lover. 

"No,  faith,  to  do  you  justice,"  says  Abso- 
lute, "you  have  been  confoundedly  stupid." 

The  Captain  could  hardly  have  missed  this 
rejoinder;  it  was  fairly  put  into  his  mouth 
by  the  wily  dramatist. 

Again  observe  how  carefully  the  way  is 
prepared  for  the  repartee  in  the  following  bit 
of  dialogue  from  "The  School  for  Scandal" : 
Sir  Peter  Teazle  has  married  a  country  girl 
and  brought  her  up  to  London,  where  she 
shows  an  unexpected  zest  for  the  pleasures  of 
the  town.  He  is  remonstrating  with  her 
about  her  extravagance  and  fashionable 
ways. 

Sir  Peter :  "Madam,  I  pray  had  you  any  of 
167 


L 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
these    elegant    expenses    when    you    married 
me?" 

Lady  Teazle:  "Lud,  Sir  Peter,  would  you 
have  me  be  out  of  the  fashion?" 

Sir  Peter :  "The  fashion  indeed !  What  had 
you  to  do  with  the  fashion  before  you  married 
me?" 

Lady  Teazle:  "For  my  part — I  should 
think  you  would  like  to  have  your  wife 
thought  a  woman  of  taste." 

Sir  Peter:  "Aye,  there  again — Taste! 
Zounds,  Madam,  you  had  no  taste  when  you 
married  me." 

The  retort  is  inevitable  and  a  modern  play- 
writer — say,  Shaw  or  Pinero — would  leave  the 
audience  to  make  it.  Lady  Teazle  answering 
merely  with  an  ironical  bow.  But  Sheridan 
was  not  addressing  subtle  intellects,  and  he 
doesn't  let  us  off  from  the  lady's  answer  in 
good  blunt  terms:  "That's  very  true  indeed. 
Sir  Peter !  After  having  married  you  I  should 
never  pretend  to  taste  again,  I  allow."  But 
why  expose  these  tricks  of  the  trade?  All 
playwrights  have  them,  and  Sheridan  uses  . 
them  very  cleverly,  if  rather  transparently. 
Another  time-honored  stage  convention  which 
Sheridan  practises  is  the  labelling  of  his 
characters.  Names  like  Malaprop,  O'Trigger, 
Absolute,  Languish,  Acres,  etc.,  are  descrip- 
tive; and  the  realist  might  ask  how  their 
owners  came  by  them,  if  he  were  pedantic 
168 


SHERIDAN 

enough  to  cross-question  the  innocent  old 
comedy  tradition,  which  is  of  course  un- 
natural and  indefensible  enough  if  we  choose 
to  take  such  things  seriously. 

About  the  comparative  merits  of  Sheri- 
dan's two  best  plays,  tastes  have  differed. 
"The  Rivals"  has  more  of  humor;  "The 
School  for  Scandal"  more  of  wit;  but  both 
have  plenty  of  each.  On  its  first  appearance, 
January  17,  1775,  "The  Rivals"  was  a  fail- 
ure, owing  partly  to  its  excessive  length, 
partly  to  bad  acting,  partly  to  a  number  of 
outrageous  puns  and  similar  witticisms  which 
the  author  afterwards  cut  out,  and  partly 
to  the  offense  given  by  the  supposed  cari- 
cature of  an  Irish  gentleman  in  the  person 
of  Sir  Lucius  O'Trigger.  Sheridan  with- 
drew the  play  and  revised  it  thoroughly, 
shortening  the  acting  time  by  an  hour 
and  redistributing  the  parts  among  the 
members  of  the  Covent  Garden  Theatre 
company.  At  is  second  performance,  eleven 
days  later,  it  proved  a  complete  success,  and 
has  remained  so  ever  since.  It  has  always 
been  a  favorite  play  with  the  actors,  because 
it  offers  so  many  fine  roles  to  an  all-star  com- 
pany. It  affords  at  least  four  first-class  parts 
to  the  comic  artist:  Sir  Anthony  Absolute, 
Mrs.  Malaprop,  Bob  Acres,  and  Sir  Lucius 
O'Trigger :  while  it  has  an  unusually  spirited 
jeune  premier,  a  charming  though  utterly 
169 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

unreasonable  heroine,  a  good  soubrette  in 
Lucy,  and  entertaining  minor  characters  in 
Fag  and  David. 

As  we  have  no  manuscript  of  the  first 
draft  of  "The  Rivals,"  it  is  impossible  to  say 
exactly  what  changes  the  author  made  in  it. 
But  as  the  text  now  stands  it  is  hard  to 
understand  why  Sir  Lucius  O'Trigger  was 
regarded  as  an  insult  to  the  Irish  nation. 
Sheridan  was  an  Irishman  and  he  protested 
that  he  would  have  been  the  last  man  to  lam- 
poon his  compatriots.  Sir  Lucius  is  a  for- 
tune hunter,  indeed,  and  he  is  always  spoiling 
for  a  fight ;  but  he  is  a  gentleman  and  a  man 
of  courage;  and  even  in  his  fortune  hunting 
he  is  sensitive  upon  the  point  of  honor:  he 
will  get  Mrs.  Malaprop's  consent  to  his  ad- 
dresses to  her  niece,  and  "do  everything 
fairly,"  for,  as  he  says  very  finely,  "I  am  so 
poor  that  I  can't  aiford  to  do  a  dirty  ac- 
tion." The  comedy  Irishman  was  nothing  new 
in  Sheridan's  time.  He  goes  back  to  Jonson 
and  Shakespeare.  In  the  eighteenth  century 
his  name  was  Teague ;  in  the  nineteenth,  Pat 
or  Mike.  We  are  familiar  with  this  stock 
figure  of  the  modern  stage,  his  brogue,  his 
long-skirted  coat  and  knee  breeches,  the 
blackthorn  shillalah  in  his  fist  and  the  du- 
deen  stuck  into  his  hatband.  The  Irish 
naturally  resent  this  grotesque :  their  history 
has  been  tragical  and  they  wish  to  be  taken 
170 


i 


SHERIDAN 

seriously.  We  have  witnessed  of  late  their 
protest  against  one  of  their  own  comedies, 
"The  Playboy  of  the  Western  World."  But 
perhaps  they  have  become  over  touchy.  There 
is  not  any  too  much  fun  in  the  world,  and  if 
we  are  to  lose  all  the  funny  national  pecu- 
liarities from  caricature  and  farce  and  dia- 
lect story,  if  the  stage  Irishman  has  got  to 
go,  and  also  the  stage  Yankee,  Dutchman, 
Jew,  Ole  Olsen,  John  Bull,  and  the  burnt  cork 
artist  of  the  negro  minstrel  show,  this  world 
will  be  a  gloomier  place.  Be  that  as  it  may, 
Sir  Lucius  O'Trigger  is  no  caricature:  he 
doesn't  even  speak  in  brogue,  and  perhaps 
the  nicest  stroke  in  his  portrait  is  that  inno- 
cent inconsequence  which  is  the  essence  of  an 
Irish  bull.  "Hah,  my  little  ambassadress,"  he 
says  to  Lucy,  with  whom  he  has  an  appoint- 
ment, "I  have  been  looking  for  you;  I  have 
been  on  the  South  Parade  this  half  hour." 

"O  gemini !"  cries  Lucy,  "and  I  have  been 
waiting  for  your  worship  on  the  North." 

"Faith,"  answers  Sir  Lucius,  "maybe  that 
was  the  reason  we  did  not  meet." 

A  great  pleasure  in  the  late  sixties  and 
early  seventies  used  to  be  the  annual  season 
of  English  classical  comedy  at  Wallack's  old 
playhouse ;  and  not  the  least  pleasant  feature 
of  this  yearly  revival  was  the  performance 
of  "The  Rivals,"  with  John  Gilbert  cast  for 
the  part  of  Sir  Anthony,  Mrs.  Gilbert  as 
171 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
Mrs.  Malaprop,  and  Lester  Wallack  himself, 
if  I  remember  rightly,  in  the  role  of  the  Cap- 
tain. But,  of  course,  the  comic  hero  of  the 
piece  is  Bob  Acres ;  and  this,  I  think,  was 
Jefferson's  great  part.  I  saw  him  three  times 
in  Bob  Acres,  at  intervals  of  years,  and  it 
was  a  masterpiece  of  high  comedy  acting:  so 
natural,  so  utterly  without  consciousness  of 
the  presence  of  spectators,  that  it  was  less 
like  acting  than  like  the  thing  itself.  The  in- 
terpretation of  the  character,  too,  was  so 
genial  and  sympathetic  that  one  was  left  with 
a  feeling  of  great  friendliness  toward  the  un- 
warlike  Bob,  and  his  cowardice  excited  not 
contempt  but  only  amusement.  The  last  time 
that  I  saw  Joe  Jefferson  in  "The  Rivals,"  he 
was  a  very  old  man,  and  there  was  a  pathetic 
impression  of  fatigue  about  his  performance, 
though  the  refinement  and  the  warm-hearted- 
ness with  which  he  carried  the  part  had  lost 
nothing  with  age. 

Historically  Sheridan's  plays  represent  a 
reaction  against  sentimental  comedy,  which 
had  held  the  stage  for  a  number  of  years,  be- 
ginning, perhaps,  with  Steele's  "Tender  Hus- 
band (1703)  and  numbering,  among  its 
triumphs,  pieces  like  Moore's  "Foundling" 
(1748),  Kelly's  "False  Delicacy,"  and  several 
of  Cumberland's  plays.  Cumberland,  by  the 
way,  who  was  intensely  jealous  of  Sheridan, 
was  the  original  of  Sir  Fretful  Plagiary  in 
172 


SHERIDAN 

"The  Critic,"  Sheridan's  only  condescension 
to  personal  satire.  He  was  seemingly  a  vain 
and  pompous  person,  and  well  deserved  his 
castigation.  The  story  is  told  of  Cumberland 
that  he  took  his  children  to  see  "The  School 
for  Scandal"  and  when  they  laughed  rebuked 
them,  saying  that  he  saw  nothing  to  laugh  at 
in  this  comedy.  When  this  was  reported  to 
Sheridan,  his  comment  was,  "I  think  that 
confoundedly  ungrateful,  for  I  went  to  see 
Cumberland's  last  tragedy  and  laughed 
heartily  at  it  all  the  way  through." 

With  Goldsmith  and  Sheridan  gayety  came 
back  to  the  English  stage.  In  their  prefaces 
and  prologues  both  of  them  complain  that  the 
comic  muse  is  dying  and  is  being  succeeded 
by  "a  mawkish  drab  of  spurious  breed  who 
deals  in  sentimentals,"  genteel  comedy,  to 
wit,  who  comes  from  France  where  comedy 
has  now  become  so  very  elevated  and  senti- 
mental that  it  has  not  only  banished  humor 
and  Moliere  from  the  stage,  but  it  has  ban- 
ished all  spectators  too.  Goldsmith  laments 
the  disgusting  solemnity  that  had  lately  in- 
fected literature  and  sneers  at  the  moralizing 
comedies  that  deal  with  the  virtues  and  dis- 
tresses of  private  life  instead  of  ridiculing  its 
faults.  Joseph  Surface  in  "The  School  for 
Scandal"  is  Sheridan's  portrait  of  the  senti- 
mental, moralizing  hypocrite,  whose  catch- 
word is  "the  man  of  sentiment";  and  whose 
173 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

habit  of  uttering  lofty  moralities  is  so  in- 
grained that  he  vents  them  even  when  no  one 
is  present  who  can  be  deceived  by  them. 

Surface :  "The  man  who  does  not  share  in 
the  distresses  of  a  brother — even  though 
merited  by  his  own  misconduct — deserves — " 

"O  Lud,"  interrupts  Lady  Sneerwell,  "you 
are  going  to  be  moral,  and  forget  that  you 
are  among  friends." 

"Egad,  that's  true,"  rejoins  Joseph,  "I'll 
keep  that  sentiment  till  I  see  Sir  Peter." 

"The  Critic"  has  a  slap  or  two  at  senti- 
mental comedy.  A  manuscript  play  has  been 
submitted  to  Mr.  Dangle,  who  reads  this 
stage  direction,  ''Bursts  into  tears  and  exit," 
and  naturally  asks,  "What  is  this,  a  trag- 
edy.'"' "No,"  explains  Mr.  Sneer,  "that's  a 
genteel  comedy,  not  a  translation — only 
taken  from  the  French :  it  is  written  in  a 
style  which  they  have  lately  tried  to  run 
down;  the  true  sentimental  and  nothing  ridic- 
ulous in  it  from  the  beginning  to  the  end. 
.  .  .  The  theatre,  in  proper  hands,  might 
certainly  be  made  the  school  of  morality ;  but 
now,  I  am  sorry  to  say  it,  people  seem  to  go 
there  principally  for  their  entertainment." 
Another  of  these  moral  comedies  is  entitled 
"  'The  Reformed  Housebreaker'  where,  by 
the  mere  force  of  humour,  housebreaking  is 
put  in  so  ridiculous  a  light,  that  if  the  piece 
174 


SHERIDAN 
has  its  proper  run  .   .   .  bolts  and  bars  will  be 
entirely  useless  by  the  end  of  the  season." 

Sheridan  has  often  been  called  the  Eng- 
lish Beaumarchais.  The  comedies  of  Beau- 
marchais,  "The  Barber  of  Seville"  and  "The 
Marriage  of  Figaro"  were  precisely  contem- 
poraneous with  Sheridan's,  and,  like  the 
latter,  they  were  a  reaction  against  sentimen- 
talism,  against  the  so-called  comedie  larmoy- 
■ante  or  tearful  comedies  of  La  Chaussee  and 
other  French  dramatists.  With  Beaumarchais 
laughter  and  mirth  returned  once  more  to 
the  French  stage.  He  goes  back  for  a  model 
to  Moliere,  as  Sheridan  goes  back  to  English 
Restoration  comedy,  and  particularly  to 
Congreve,  whom  he  resembles  in  the  wit  of 
his  dialogue  and  the  vivacity  of  his  character 
painting,  but  whom  he  greatly  excels  in  the 
invention  of  plot  and  situation.  Congreve's 
plots  are  intricate  and  hard  to  follow,  highly 
improbable  and  destitute  of  climaxes.  On  the 
other  hand,  Sheridan  is  a  master  of  plot. 
The  duel  scene  in  "The  Rivals,"  the  auction 
scene  and  the  famous  screen  scene  in  "The 
School  for  Scandal"  are  three  of  the  most 
skilfully  managed  situations  in  English 
comedy.  Congreve's  best  play,  "The  Way  of 
the  World"  (1700),  was  a  failure  on  the 
stage.  But  whatever  Sheridan's  shortcom- 
ings, a  want  of  practical  effectiveness,  of 
acting  quality,  was  never  one  of  them.  Sheri- 
175 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
dan  revived  society  drama,  what  Lamb  called 
the  artificial  comedy  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury. Lydia  Languish,  with  her  romantic 
notions,  and  Mrs.  Malaprop  with  her  "nice 
derangement  of  epitaphs"  are  artificial  char- 
acters. Bob  Acres  is  for  the  most  part  de- 
lightfully natural,  but  his  system  of  referen- 
tial or  sentimental  swearing — "Odds  blushes 
and  blooms"  and  the  like — is  an  artificial 
touch.  The  weakest  feature  of  "The  Rivals" 
is  the  underplot,  the  love  affairs  of  Faulk- 
land  and  Julia.  Faulkland's  particular  vari- 
ety of  jealousy  is  a  "humor"  of  the 
Ben  Jonsonian  sort,  a  sentimental  alloy,  as 
Charles  Lamb  pronounced  it,  and  anyway 
infinitely  tiresome.  In  modern  acting  ver- 
sions this  business  is  usually  abridged.  As 
Jefferson  played  it,  Julia's  part  was  cut  out 
altogether,  and  Faulkland  makes  only  one 
appearance  (Act  II,  Scene  I), where  his  pres- 
ence is  necessary  for  the  going  on  of  the  main 
action. 

There  is  one  particular  in  which  Congreve 
and  Sheridan  sin  alike.  They  make  all  the 
characters  witty.  "Tell  me  if  Congreve's 
fools  are  fools  indeed,"  wrote  Pope.  And 
Sheridan  can  never  resist  the  temptation  of 
putting  clever  sayings  into  the  mouths  of 
simpletons.  The  romantic  Miss  Languish  is 
nearly  as  witty  as  the  very  unromantic  Lady 
Teazle.  I  need  not  quote  the  good  things  that 
176 


SHERIDAN 
Fag  and  Lucy  say,  but  Thomas  the  coach- 
man, and  the  stupid  old  family  servant  David 
say  things  equally  good.  It  is  David,  e.g., 
who,  when  his  master  remarks  that  if  he  is 
killed  in  the  duel  his  honor  will  follow  him 
to  the  grave,  rejoins,  "Now  that's  just  the 
place  where  I  could  make  shift  to  do  without 
it."  Sir  Anthony  is  witty.  Bob  Acres  him- 
self is  witty,  and  even  Mrs.  Malaprop — fool- 
ish old  woman — delivers  repartees.  Mrs. 
Malaprop's  verbal  blunders,  by  the  way,  are 
a  good  instance  of  that  artificial  high  polish 
so  characteristic  of  Sheridan's  art.  There 
are  people  in  earlier  comedies  who  make  ludi- 
crous misapplications  of  words — Shakes- 
peare's Dogberry,  e.g.,  or  Dame  Quickly,  but 
they  do  it  naturally  and  occasionally.  Sheri- 
dan reduces  these  accidents  to  a  system — a 
science.  No  one  in  real  life  was  ever  so  per- 
severingly  and  so  brilliantly  wrong  as  Mrs. 
Malaprop. 

Dramatically  this  is  out  of  character 
and  is,  therefore,  a  fault,  though  a  fault  easy 
to  forgive  since  it  results  in  so  much  clever 
talk.  It  is  a  fault,  as  I  have  said,  which  Con- 
greve  shares  with  Sheridan,  his  heir  and  con- 
tinuator.  Perhaps  the  lines  of  character  are 
not  cut  quite  so  deep  in  Sheridan  as  in  Con- 
greve  nor  has  his  dialogue  the  elder  drama- 
tist's condensed,  epigrammatic  solidity.  But 
177 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

on  the  whole,  "The  Rivals"  and  "The  School 
for  Scandal"  are  better  plaj's  than  Congreve 
ever  wrote. 


178 


THE  POETRY  OF  THE 
CAVALIERS 

THE  spirit  of  the  seventeenth  century 
Cavaliers  has  been  made  familiar  to  us 
by  historians  and  romancers,  but  it  did  not 
find  very  adequate  expression  in  contempo- 
rary verse.  There  are  two  perfect  songs  by 
Lovelace,  "To  Althea  from  Prison"  and  "To 
Lucasta,  on  Going  to  the  Wars."  But  if  we 
look  into  collections  like  Charles  Mackay's 
"Songs  of  the  Cavaliers,"  we  are  disap- 
pointed. These  consist  mainly  of  political 
campaign  songs  little  removed  from  dog- 
gerel, satires  by  Butler  and  Cleveland,  and 
rollicking  ballad  choruses  by  Alexander 
Brome,  Sir  Roger  L'Estrange,  Sir  Richard 
Fanshawe,  who  was  Prince  Rupert's  secre- 
tary; or  haply  by  that  gallant  royalist  gen- 
tleman, Arthur  Lord  Capel,  executed,  though 
a  prisoner  of  war,  after  the  surrender  of  Col- 
chester. You  may  remember  Milton's  sonnet 
"To  the  Lord  General  Fairfax  at  the  Siege 
of  Colchester."  These  were  the  marks  of  a 
Cavalier  ballad:  to  abuse  the  Roundheads, 
to  be  convivial  and  profane,  to  profess  a 
reckless  daring  in  fight,  devotion  to  the 
179 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

ladies,  and  loyalty  to  church  and  king.  The 
gay  courage  of  the  Cavalier  contrasted  itself 
with  the  grim  and  stubborn  valor  of  the 
Roundhead.  The  bitterest  drop  in  the  cup 
of  the  defeated  kingsmen  was  that  they  were 
beaten  by  their  social  inferiors,  by  muckers 
and  religious  fanatics  who  cropped  their 
hair,  wore  narrow  bands  instead  of  lace  col- 
lars, and  droned  long  prayers  through  their 
noses ;  people  like  the  butcher  Harrison  and 
the  leather  seller,  Praise-God  Barebones,  and 
the  brewers,  cobblers,  grocers  and  like  me- 
chanical trades  who  figured  as  the  preachers 
in  Cromwell's  New  Model  army.  The  usual 
commonplaces  of  anti-Puritan  satire,  the 
alleged  greed  and  hypocrisy  of  the  despised 
but  victorious  faction,  their  ridiculous 
solemnity,  their  illiteracy,  contentiousness, 
superstition,  and  hatred  of  all  liberal  arts, 
are  duly  set  forth  in  such  pieces  as  "The 
Anarchic,"  "The  Geneva  Ballad,"  and  "Hey 
then,  up  go  we."  The  most  popular  of  all 
these  was  the  famous  song,  "When  the  King 
enjoys  his  own  again,"  which  Ritson  indeed 
calls — but  surely  with  much  exaggeration — 
the  most  famous  song  of  any  time  or  coun- 
try. 

And  though  today  we  see  Whitehall 
With  cobwebs  hung  around  the  wall, 
Yet  Heaven  shall  make  amends  for  all 
When  the  King  enjoys  his  own  again. 
180 


THE  POETRY  OF  THE  CAVALIERS 

But  somehow  the  finer  essence  of  the  Cav- 
alier spirit  escapes  us  in  these  careless  verses. 
Better  are  the  recorded  sayings  in  prose  of 
many  gallant  gentlemen  in  the  King's  service. 
There,  for  instance,  was  Sir  Edmund  Ver- 
ney,  the  royal  standard  bearer  who  was 
killed  at  Edgehill.  He  was  offered  his  life 
by  a  throng  of  his  enemies  if  he  would  deliver 
the  standard.  He  answered  that  his  life  was 
his  own,  but  the  standard  was  his  and  their 
sovereign's  and  he  would  not  deliver  it  while 
he  lived.  At  the  outbreak  of  the  war  he  had 
said  to  Hyde :  "I  have  eaten  his  [the  King's] 
bread  and  served  him  near  thirty  years,  and 
will  not  do  so  base  a  thing  as  to  forsake  him ; 
I  choose  rather  to  lose  my  life — which  I  am 
sure  to  do — to  preserve  and  defend  those 
things  which  are  against  my  conscience  to 
preserve  and  defend;  for  I  will  deal  freely 
with  you:  I  have  no  reverence  for  bishops 
for  whom  this  quarrel  subsists." 

And  there  was  that  high-hearted  noble- 
man, the  Marquis  of  Winchester,  whose  for- 
tress of  Basing  House,  with  its  garrison  of 
five  hundred  men  and  their  families,  held  out 
for  years  against  the  Parliament.  It  was 
continuously  besieged  from  July,  1643,  to 
November,  1645,  and  at  one  time  Sir  Wil- 
liam Waller  attacked  it  in  vain,  with  a  force 
of  seven  thousand.  At  last  Cromwell  took  it 
by  storm,  whereupon  the  Marquis,  made  pris- 
181 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
oner,  "broke  out  and  said  that  if  the  King 
had  no  more  ground  in  England  but  Basing 
House,  he  would  adventure  as  he  did,  and  so 
maintain  it  to  the  uttermost;  comforting 
himself  in  this  disaster  that  Basing  House 
was  called  Loyalty."  The  sack  of  this  great 
stronghold  yielded  over  200,000  pounds,  and 
Clarendon  says  that  on  its  every  window- 
pane  was  written  with  a  diamond  point 
"Aimez  Loyaute." 

The  Cavalier  spirit  prolonged  itself  down 
into  the  Jacobite  songs  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury which  centre  about  the  two  attempts  of 
the  Stuarts  to  regain  their  crown — in  1T15 
and  in  "the  Fort3'-five." 

It  was  a'  for  our  rightfu'  King 
That  we  left  fair  Scotland's  strand: 
It  was  a'  for  our  rightfu'  King 
That  we  e'er  saw  Irish  land. 
He  turned  his  charger  as  he  spake 

Beside  the  river  shore: 
He  gave  his  bridle  rein  a  shake. 
Cried  "Adieu  for  evermore,  my  love; 

Adieu  for  evermore." 

The  Hanoverians  have  been  good  enough 
constitutional  monarchs  but  without  much 
appeal  to  the  imagination.  "I  never  can 
think  of  that  German  fellow  as  King  of  Eng- 
land," says  Harry  Warrington  in  "The  Vir- 
ginians," who  has  just  been  snubbed  by 
182 


THE  POETRY  OF  THE  CAVALIERS 
George  II,  the  sovereign  who  hated  "boetry 
and  bainting."  The  Stuarts  were  bad  kings, 
but  they  managed  to  inspire  a  passionate 
loyalty  in  their  adherents,  a  devotion  which 
went  proudly  into  battle,  into  exile,  and  onto 
the  scaffold:  which  followed  them  through 
their  misfortunes  and  survived  their  final 
downfall.  They  were  a  native,  or  at  least  a 
Scottish  d\'nasty;  and  Scotland,  though 
upon  the  whole  Presbyterian  in  religion  and 
Whiggish  in  politics,  was  most  tenacious  of 
the  Jacobite  tradition.  Consider  the  loss  to 
British  romance  if  the  Stuarts  had  never 
reigned  and  sinned  and  suffered !  Half  of  the 
Waverley  novels  and  all  the  royalist  songs, 
from  Lovelace  toasting  in  prison  "the  sweet- 
ness, mercy,  majesty,  and  glories  of  his 
King,"  down  to  Burns's  "Lament  for  Cullo- 
den"  and  the  secret  healths  to  "Charlie  over 
the  water."  Three  centuries  divide  Chaste- 
lard,  dying  for  Mary  Stuart,  from  Walter 
Scott,  paralytic,  moribund,  standing  by  the 
tomb  of  the  Young  Pretender  in  St.  Peter's 
and  murmuring  to  himself  of  "Charlie  and 
his  men."  Nay,  is  there  not  even  to-day  a 
White  Rose  Society  which  celebrates  yearly 
the  birthday  of  St.  Charles,  the  martyr: 
some  few  score  gentlemen  with  their  com- 
mittees, organs,  propaganda,  still  bent  on 
dethroning  the  Hanoverians  and  bringing  in 
some  remote  collateral  descendant.'*  thinnest 
183 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

ghost  of  legitimism,  walking  in  the  broad 
sunlight  of  the  twentieth  century,  under  the 
nose  of  crown  and  parliament,  disregarded 
of  all  men  except,  here  and  there,  a  writer  of 
humorous  paragraphs   for  the  newspapers? 

For  the  passion  of  loyalty  is  extinct — ex- 
tinct as  the  dodo.  It  was  not  patriotism,  as 
we  know  it;  nor  was  it  the  personal  homage 
paid  to  great  men,  to  the  Cromwells,  Wash- 
ingtons,  Bonapartes,  and  Bismarcks.  It  was 
a  loyalty  to  the  king  as  king,  to  a  symbol, 
a  fetich  whom  divinity  doth  hedge.  In  the 
political  creed  of  the  Stuarts,  such  homage 
was  a  prerogative  of  the  crown,  and  right 
royally  did  they  exact  it,  accepting  all  sacri- 
fices and  repaying  them  with  neglect,  in- 
gratitude, and  betrayal.  Yes,  loyalty  is  ob- 
solete, and  the  Stuarts  were  unworthy  of  it. 
But  no  matter,  it  was  a  fine  old  passion. 

After  all,  one  of  the  finest  things  ever  said 
of  Charles  I  was  said  by  a  political  opponent, 
the  poet  Andrew  Marvell,  Milton's  assistant 
in  the  secretaryship  for  foreign  tongues, 
when  speaking  of  the  King's  dignified  be- 
havior upon  the  scaffold,  he  wrote : — 

He  nothing  common  did  or  mean, 
Upon  that  memorable  scene 
But,  with  his  keener  eye. 
The  axe's  edge  did  try; 
Nor  called  the  gods,  with  vulgar  spite, 
184 


THE  POETRY  OF  THE  CAVALIERS 

To  vindicate  his  helpless  right. 
But  bowed  his  comely  head 
Down  as  upon  a  bed. 

The  Cavalier  stood  for  the  church  as  well 
as  for  the  king,  but  he  was  not  commonly  a 
deeply  religious  man.  The  church  poetry  of 
that  generation  is  often  sweetly  or  fervently 
devout,  but  it  was  written  mostly  by  clergy- 
men, like  George  Herbert  or  Herrick — a 
rather  worldly  parson:  now  and  then  by  a 
college  recluse,  like  Crashaw — who  became  a 
Roman  Catholic  priest;  or  sometimes  by  a 
layman  like  Vaughan — who  was  a  doctor ;  or 
Francis  Quarles,  whose  gloomy  religious 
verses  have  little  to  distinguish  them  from 
Puritan  poetry.  These  poets  were  royalists 
but  hardly  Cavaliers.  The  real  Cavaliers,  the 
courtly  and  secular  poets  like  Suckling, 
Lovelace,  Cleveland,  and  the  rest,  stood  for 
the  church  for  social  reasons.  It  was  the 
church  of  their  class,  ancient,  conservative, 
aristocratic.  Carlyle,  of  Scotch  Presbyterian 
antecedents,  speaks  disrespectfully  of  the 
English  Church,  "with  its  singular  old 
rubrics  and  its  four  surplices  at  All-hallow- 
tide,"  and  describes  the  Hampton  Court 
Conference  of  1604  as  "decent  ceremonialism 
facing  awful,  devout  Puritanism."  Charles 
II  tried  to  persuade  the  Scotch  Earl  of 
Lauderdale  to  become  an  Episcopalian, 
185 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
assuring  him   that   Presbyterianism  was  no 
religion  for  a  gentleman.  Says  the  spirit  in 
Dipsychus : — 

The  Church  of  England  I  belong  to 
And  think  dissenters  not  far  wrong  too; 
They're  vulgar  dogs,  but  for  his  creed 
I  hold  that  no  man  will  be  d — d. 

The  Cavalier  was  the  inheritor  of  the  me- 
diaeval knight  and  the  forerunner  of  the 
modern  gentleman.  To  the  stern  Puritan  con- 
science he  opposed,  as  his  guiding  motive,  the 
knightly  sense  of  honor,  a  sort  of  artificial 
or  aristocratic  conscience.  The  Puritan 
looked  upon  himself  as  an  instrument  of  the 
divine  will.  He  acted  as  ever  in  his  great 
taskmaster's  eye:  his  sword  was  the  sword 
of  the  Lord  and  of  Gideon.  Hence  his  sturdy, 
sublime  courage.  You  cannot  lick  a  Calvinist 
who  knows  that  God  is  with  him.  But  honor 
is  not  so  much  a  regard  for  God  as  for  one- 
self— a  finer  kind  of  self-respect.  Inferior  in 
momentum  to  the  Puritan's  sense  of  duty, 
there  is  something  gallant  and  chivalrous 
about  it.  The  Cavalier  spirit  was  not  so 
grave  as  the  knight's.  Though  he  fought  for 
church  and  king,  there  was  lacking  the  vow 
of  knighthood,  the  religious  dedication  of 
oneself  to  the  service  of  the  cross  and  of  one's 
feudal  suzerain.  But  you  notice  how  the 
Cavalier,  like  the  knight,  relates  his  honor  to 
186 


THE  POETRY  OF  THE  CAVALIERS 

the   service  of  his   lady.   Lovelace's   famous 
lines : — 

I  could  not  love  thee,  dear,  so  much, 
Loved  I  not  honour  more, 

may  stand  for  the  Cavalier  motto. 

Like  the  knight,  the  chevalier  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  the  seventeenth  century  Cavalier  too, 
as  his  name  implies,  was  a  horseman.  Rupert's 
cavalry  was  the  strongest  arm  of  the  King's 
service.  Prince  Rupert  or  Ruprecht,  the 
nephew  of  the  King,  was  the  son  of  that 
Elizabeth  Stuart,  nicknamed  the  Queen  of 
Hearts,  whom  Sir  Henry  Wotton  celebrated 
in  his  lofty  lines  "On  his  Mistress,  the  Queen 
of  Bohemia," 

You  meaner  beauties  of  the  night 
That  poorly  satisfy  our  eyes, 
More  by  your  number  than  your  light; 
You  common  people  of  the  skies ; 
What  are  you  when  the  moon  shall  rise? 

The  impetuous  charges  of  Rupert's  cavalry 
won  the  day  at  Edgehill  and  all  but  won  it  at 
Marston  Moor.  But  they  were  an  undisci- 
plined troop  and  much  given  to  plunder — a 
German  word,  by  the  way,  which  Prince 
Rupert  introduced  into  England.  Perhaps 
you  have  seen  the  once  popular  engraving 
entitled  "The  Cavalier's  Pets."  A  noble  stag- 
hound  is  guarding  a  pair  of  riding  boots,  a 
187 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

pair  of  gauntlets,  a  pair  of  cavalry  pistols 
and  a  wide  hat  with  sweeping  plume.  The 
careless  Cavalier  songs  have  the  air  of  being 
composed  on  horseback  and  written  down  on 
the  saddle  leather:  riding  ballads  in  a  very 
different  sense  from  the  old  riding  ballads  of 
the  Scottish  Border.  Robert  Browning  has 
reproduced  very  exactly  the  characteristics 
of  the  species  in  his  "Cavalier  Tunes."  In 
"Give  a  Rouse"  he  presents  the  Cavalier 
drinking;  in  "Boot  and  Saddle"  the  Cavalier 
riding,  and  in  all  of  them  the  Cavalier  swear- 
ing, laughing,  and  cheering  for  the  King, 

Kentish  Sir  Byng  stood  for  his  King, 
Bidding  the  crop-headed  Parliament  swing; 
And,  pressing  a  troop  unable  to  stoop 
And   see   the   rogues   flourish    and  honest   folk 

droop, 
Marched  them  along,  fifty-score  strong. 
Great-hearted  gentlemen,  singing  this  song. 
God  for  King  Charles !  Pym  and  such  carles 
To  the  Devil  that  prompts  'em  their  treasonous 

paries ! 
Hampden  to  hell,  and  his  obsequies'  knell 
Serve  Hazelrig,  Fiennes,  and  young  Harry  as 

weU! 
Hold  by  the  right,  you  double  your  might; 
So,  onward  to  Nottingham,  fresh  for  the  fight. 

Indeed  many  modern  poets,  such  as  Burns, 

Scott,  Browning,  George  Walter  Thornbury, 

and  Aytoun  in  his   *T.ays   of  the   Scottish 

188 


THE  POETRY  OF  THE  CAVALIERS 

Cavaliers,"  have  caught  and  prolonged  the 
ancient  note,  with  a  literary  skill  not  often 
vouchsafed  to  the  actual,  contemporary 
singers. 

Here,  for  instance,  is  a  single  stanza  from 
Thornbury's  overlong  ballad,  "The  Three 
Troopers" : — 

Into   the  Devil   Tavern  three  booted  troopers 

strode. 
From  spur  to  feather  spotted  and  splashed 
With  the  mud  of  a  winter  road. 
In  each  of  their  cups  they  dropped  a  crust 
And  stared  at  the  guests  with  a  frown; 
Then  drew  their  swords  and  roared,  for  a  toast, 
"God  send  this  Crum-well-down !" 

The  singing  and  fighting  Cavalier  was  most 
nobly  represented  by  James  Graham,  Mar- 
quis of  Montrose,  a  hero  of  romance  and  a 
great  partisan  leader.  With  a  handful  of  wild 
Irish  and  West  Highland  clansmen, — Gor- 
dons, Camerons,  McDonalds, — with  no  artil- 
lery, no  commissariat,  and  hardly  any  cav- 
alry, Montrose  defeated  the  armies  of  the 
Covenant,  took  the  towns  of  Aberdeen,  Dun- 
dee, Glasgow,  and  Edinburgh,  and  in  one 
brief  and  brilliant  campaign,  reconquered 
Scotland  for  the  King.  Nothing  more  roman- 
tic in  the  history  of  the  Civil  War  than 
Montrose's  descent  upon  Clan  Campbell  at 
Inverlochy,  rushing  down  from  Ben  Nevis 
in  the  early  morning  fogs  upon  the  shores  of 
189 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
wild  Loch  Eil.  You  may  read  of  this  exploit 
in  Walter  Scott's  "Legend  of  Montrose,"  as 
you  may  read  of  the  great  Marquis's  death  in 
Aytoun's  ballad,  "The  Execution  of  Mont- 
rose." For  his  success  was  short.  He  could 
not  hold  his  wild  army  together:  with  the 
coming  of  harvest  the  clansmen  dispersed  to 
the  glens  and  hills.  Montrose  escaped  to  Hol- 
land and,  after  the  death  of  the  King,  ven- 
turing once  more  into  the  Highlands,  with  a 
commission  from  Charles  II,  he  was  defeated, 
taken  prisoner,  sentenced  to  death  in  Edin- 
burgh, hanged,  drawn,  and  quartered.  His 
head  was  fixed  on  an  iron  spike  on  the  pin- 
nacle of  the  tollbooth ;  one  hand  set  over  the 
gate  of  Perth  and  one  over  the  gate  of 
Stirling;  one  leg  over  the  gate  of  Aberdeen, 
the  other  over  the  gate  of  Glasgow.  Montrose 
wrote  only  a  handful  of  poems,  rough,  sol- 
dierly pieces, — one  on  the  night  before  his 
execution,  one  on  learning,  at  the  Hague,  of 
the  King's  death.  But  by  far  the  best  and  the 
best  known  of  these  are  the  famous  lines  of 
which  I  will  quote  a  part.  You  will  notice 
that,  under  the  form  of  a  lover  addressing  his 
mistress,  it  is  really  the  King  speaking  to  his 
kingdom.  You  will  notice  also  the  fine  Celtic 
boastfulness  of  the  strain  and  the  high- 
hearted courage  of  its  most  familiar  passage 
— the  gambler's  courage  who  stakes  his  all  on 
a  single  throw. 

190 


THE  POETRY  OF  THE  CAVALIERS 

My  dear  and  only  love,  I  pray  that  little  world 
of  thee 

Be  governed  by  no  other  sway  than  purest  mon- 
archy ; 

For  if  confusion  have  a  part,  which  virtuous 
souls  abhor, 

I'll  hold  a  synod  in  my  heart  and  never  love  thee 
more. 

As  Alexander  I  will  reign  and  I  will  reign 
alone ; 

My  thoughts  did  ever  more  disdain  a  rival  on 
my  throne. 

He  either  fears  his  fate  too  much,  or  his  deserts 
are  small. 

Who  dares  not  put  it  to  the  touch,  to  gain  or 
lose  it  all, 

But  if  no  faithless  action  stain  thy  love  and  con- 
stant word, 

I'll  make  thee  glorious  by  my  pen  and  famous 
by  my  sword: 

I'll  serve  thee  in  such  noble  ways  was  never 
heard  before: 

I'll  crown  and  deck  thee  all  with  bays  and  love 
thee  more  and  more. 

I  have  dwelt  almost  exclusively  upon  the 
military  and  political  aspect  of  Cavalier 
verse.  A  wider  view  would  include  the  mis- 
cellaneous poetry,  and  especially  the  love 
poetry  of  Carew,  Herrick,  Waller,  Haberton, 
Lovelace,  Suckling,  Cowley,  and  others,  who, 
if  not,  strictly  speaking.  Cavaliers,  were 
royalists.  For  the  only  poets  in  England  who 
191 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

took  the  Parliament's  side  were  Milton, 
George  Wither,  and  Andrew  Marvell.  Of 
those  I  have  named,  some  had  much  to  do 
with  public  affairs  and  others  had  little. 
Thomas  Carew,  the  court  poet,  died  before 
the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War.  Herrick  was 
a  country  minister  in  Devonshire,  who  was 
deprived  of  his  parish  by  Parliament  and 
spent  the  interregnum  in  London.  Edmund 
Waller,  a  member  of  the  House  of  Commons, 
intrigued  for  the  king  and  came  near  losing 
his  head ;  but,  being  a  cousin  of  Oliver  Crom- 
well and  very  rich,  was  let  off  with  a  heavy 
fine  and  went  to  France.  Sir  John  Suckling, 
a  very  brilliant  and  dissipated  court  favor- 
ite, a  very  typical  Cavalier,  had  raised  a 
troop  of  horse  for  the  King  in  the  Bishops' 
War:  had  conspired  against  Parliament,  fled 
to  the  continent,  and  died  at  Paris  by  his 
own  hand.  Colonel  Richard  Lovelace  fought 
in  the  royal  armies,  was  twice  imprisoned, 
spent  all  his  large  fortune  in  the  cause  and 
hung  about  London  in  great  poverty,  dying 
shortly  before  the  Restoration.  Cowley  was 
a  Cambridge  scholar  who  lost  his  fellowship 
and  went  to  France  with  the  exiled  court: 
became  secretary  to  the  queen,  Henrietta 
Maria,  and  carried  on  correspondence  in 
cipher  between  her  and  the  captive  King. 

The   love   verses    of   these   poets    were    in 
many  keys:  Carew's  polished,   courtly,  and 
192 


THE  POETRY  OF  THE  CAVALIERS 

somewhat  artificial;  Herrick's  warm,  natu- 
ral, sweet,  but  richly  sensuous  rather  than 
passionate ;  Cowley's  coldly  ingenious ;  Love- 
lace's and  Haberton's  serious  and  tender; 
Suckling's  careless,  gay,  and  "agreeably  im- 
pudent," the  poetry  of  gallantry  rather  than 
love,  with  a  dash  of  cynicism:  on  its  way  to 
become  the  poetry  of  the  Restoration  wits. 


193 


ABRAHAM  COWLEY 

COWLEY  has  been  constantly  used  to 
point  a  moral.  He  is  the  capital  in- 
stance, in  our  literary  history,  of  the  in- 
stability of  fame;  or,  rather,  of  the  wide 
variation  between  contemporary  rating  and 
the  judgment  of  posterity.  Time  has  given 
its  ironical  answer  to  the  very  first  line  in  the 
first  poem  of  his  collection : — 

What  shall  I  do  to  be  forever  known? 

When  Cowley  died  in  1667  and  was  buried 
in  Westminster  Abbey  near  the  tombs  of 
Chaucer  and  Spenser,  he  was,  in  general 
opinion,  the  greatest  English  poet  since  the 
latter.  "Paradise  Lost"  appeared  in  that 
same  year,  but  at  this  date  Milton's  fame 
was  not  comparable  with  Cowley's,  his  junior 
by  ten  years.  Milton's  miscellaneous  poems, 
first  collected  in  1645,  did  not  reach  a  second 
edition  till  1673.  Meanwhile  Cowley's  works 
went  through  eight  impressions. 

I  believe  that  the  only  contemporaries  who 

rivaled  him  in  popularity  were  Herbert  and 

Cleveland,   for  Waller   did  not  come  to  his 

own  until   after   Cowley's   death.    Herbert's 

195 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
"Temple,"  posthumously  printed  in  1634, 
had  already  become  a  religious  classic.  Mas- 
son  computes  its  annual  sale  at  a  thousand 
copies  for  the  first  twenty  years  of  its  publi- 
cation. Of  Cleveland's  poems  eleven  editions 
were  issued  during  his  lifetime — and  none 
afterward.  Apropos  of  the  author's  arrest  at 
Norwich  in  1655  and  his  magniloquent  letter 
to  Cromwell  on  that  occasion,  Carlyle  causti- 
cally remarks:  "This  is  John  Cleveland,  the 
famed  Cantab  scholar,  Royalist  Judge  Ad- 
vocate, and  thrice  illustrious  satirist  and  son 
of  the  muses,  who  had  gone  through  eleven 
editions  in  those  times,  far  transcending  all 
Miltons  and  all  mortals — and  does  not  now 
need  any  twelfth  edition  that  we  hear  of." 
This  was  true  till  1903  when  Professor  Ber- 
dan  brought  out  the  first  modern  and  critical, 
and  probably  the  final,  edition  of  Cleveland. 
But  neither  Herbert  nor  Cleveland  enjoyed 
anything  like  Cowley's  literary  eminence. 
Cleveland  was  a  sharp  political  lampooner 
whose  verses  had  a  temporary  vogue  like 
"M'Fingal"  or  "The  Gospel  according  to 
Benjamin."  A  few  years  later  Butler  did  the 
same  thing  ten  times  as  cleverly.  Even 
"Hudibras"  has  lost  much  of  its  point, 
though  its  originality,  learning,  and  wit  have 
given  it  a  certain  sort  of  immortality,  while 
Cleveland  is  utterly  extinct.  Herbert's  work 
is,  of  course,  more  permanent  than  Cleve- 
196 


ABRAHAM  COWLEY 

land's,  and  he  is  a  truer  poet  than  Cowley, 
though  his  appeal  is  to  a  smaller  public,  and 
he  has  but  a  single  note. 

For  many  years  after  his  death,  Cowley's 
continued  to  be  a  great  name  and  fame;  yet 
the  swift  decay  of  his  real  influence  became 
almost  proverbial.  Dryden,  who  learned  much 
from  him ;  Addison,  who  uses  him  as  a  dread- 
ful example  in  his  essay  on  mixed  wit;  and 
Pope,  who  speaks  of  him  with  a  traditional 
respect,  all  testify  to  this  rapid  loss  of  his 
hold  upon  the  community  of  readers.  It  was 
in  1737  that  Pope  asked,  "Who  now  reads 
Cowley.'"'  which  is  much  as  if  one  should  ask 
to-day,  "Who  now  reads  Byron.'"'  or  as  if 
our  grandchildren  should  inquire  in  1960, 
"Who  reads  Tennyson.'"' 

Cowley's  literary  fortunes  have  been  in 
marked  contrast  with  those  of  his  contem- 
porary, Robert  Herrick,  whose  "Hesperides" 
fell  silently  from  the  press  in  1643,  and  who 
died  unnoticed  in  his  remote  Devonshire 
vicarage  in  1674.  You  may  search  the  litera- 
ture of  England  for  a  hundred  and  fifty 
years  without  finding  a  single  acknowledg- 
ment of  Herrick's  gift  to  that  literature.  The 
folio  edition  of  Cowley's  works,  1668,  was 
accompanied  with  an  imposing  account  of 
his  life  and  writings  by  Thomas  Sprat,  after- 
wards Bishop  of  Rochester.  Dr.  Johnson's 
"Lives  of  the  English  Poets,"  1779-1781, 
197 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

begins  with  the  life  of  Cowley,  in  which  he 
gives  his  famous  analysis  of  the  metaphysical 
school,  the  locus  classicus  on  that  topic.  And 
although  Cowley's  poetry  had  faded  long  ago 
and  he  had  lost  his  readers,  Johnson  treats 
him  as  a  dignified  memory,  worthy  of  a  solid 
monument.  No  one  had  thought  it  worth 
while  to  write  Herrick's  biography,  to  ad- 
dress him  in  complimentary  verse,  to  cele- 
brate his  death  in  elegy,  to  comment  on  his 
work,  or  even  to  mention  his  name.  Dryden, 
Addison,  Johnson,  all  the  critics  of  three 
successive  generations  are  quite  dumb  con- 
cerning Herrick.  But  for  the  circumstance 
that  some  of  his  little  pieces,  with  the  musical 
airs  to  which  they  were  set,  were  included 
in  several  seventeenth  century  songbooks, 
there  is  nothing  to  show  that  there  was  any 
English  poet  named  Herrick,  until  Dr.  Nott 
reprinted  a  number  of  selections  from  "Hes- 
perides"  in  1810.  But  now  Herrick  is 
thoroughly  revived  and  almost  a  favorite. 
His  best  things  are  in  all  the  anthologies,  and 
many  of  them  are  set  to  music  by  modern 
composers,  and  sung  to  the  piano,  as  once 
to  the  lute.  The  critics  rank  him  with  Shelley 
among  our  foremost  lyric&l  poets.  Swinburne 
thought  him  the  best  of  English  song  writers. 
The  "Hesperides"  is  frequently  reprinted, 
sometimes  in  editions  de  luxe,  with  sympa- 
198 


J 


ABRAHAM  COWLEY 

thetic  illustrations  by  Mr.  Abbey  and  other 
distinguished  artists. 

There  are  several  reasons  why  Cowley  cut 
so  disproportionate  a  figure  in  his  own  gen- 
eration. In  the  first  place,  he  was  a  marvel 
of  precocity.  He  wrote  an  epic  at  the  age  of 
ten  and  another  at  twelve.  His  first  volume 
of  verse,  "Poetical  Blossoms,"  was  published 
in  his  fifteenth  year,  and  one  or  two  of  the 
pieces  in  it  were  as  good  as  anything  that 
he  did  afterward.  Chatterton  was  perhaps 
equally  wonderful;  while  Milton,  Pope, 
Keats,  and  Bryant  all  produced  work,  while 
still  under  age,  which  outranks  Cowley's.  Yet 
none  of  them  showed  quite  so  early  maturity. 

Again  Cowley's  personal  character,  learn- 
ing, and  public  employments  conferred  dig- 
nity upon  his  literary  work.  He  was  the  dar- 
ling of  Cambridge;  and,  when  ejected  by  the 
parliament,  joined  the  king  at  Oxford,  and 
then  followed  the  queen  to  Paris.  He  was  a 
steadfast  loyalist;  but  among  the  reckless, 
intriguing,  dissolute  Cavaliers  who  formed 
the  entourage  of  the  exiled  court,  Cowley's 
serious  and  thoroughly  respectable  character 
stood  out  in  high  relief.  He  took  a  medical 
degree  from  Oxford,  and  became  proficient  in 
botany,  composing  a  Latin  poem  on  plants. 
Dr.  Johnson  thought  his  Latin  verse  better 
than  Milton's.  After  1660  a  member  of  the 
triumphant  party,  he  was,  notwithstanding, 
199 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
highly  esteemed  by  political  opponents.  He 
held  a  position  of  authority  like  Addison's  or 
Southey's  at  a  later  day.  When  he  died, 
Charles  II  said  that  Mr.  Cowley  had  not  left 
a  better  man  behind  him  in  England. 

But,  after  all,  the  chief  reason  why  Cowley 
was  rated  so  high  by  his  contemporaries  was 
that  his  poetry  fell  in  with  the  prevailing 
taste.  Matthew  Arnold  said  that  the  trouble 
with  the  Queen  Anne  poetry  was  that  it  was 
conceived  in  the  wits  and  not  in  the  soul. 
Cowley's  poetry  was  cerebral,  "stiff  with  in- 
tellection," as  Coleridge  said  of  another.  He 
anticipated  Dryden  in  his  power  of  reason- 
ing in  verse.  He  is  pedantically  learned, 
bookish,  scholastic,  smells  of  the  lamp,  crams 
his  verse  with  allusions  and  images  drawn 
from  physics,  metaphysics,  geography, 
alchemy,  astronomy,  history,  school  divin- 
ity, logic,  grammar,  and  constitutional  law. 
Above  all,  he  had  the  quality  on  which  his 
century  placed  such  an  abnormal  value — wit : 
i.e.,  ingenuity  in  devising  far-fetched  con- 
ceits and  detecting  remote  analogies.  With- 
out the  subtlety  of  Donne  and  the  quaintness 
of  Herbert,  he  coldly  carried  out  the  method 
of  the  concetti  poets  into  a  system.  At  its 
best,  this  fashion  now  and  then  struck  out  a 
brilliant  effect,  as  where  Donne  says  of  Mis- 
tress Elizabeth  Drury: 
200 


ABRAHAM  COWLEY 

Her  pure  and  eloquent  blood 
Spoke  in  her  cheek,  and  so  divinely  wrought 
That  one  might  almost  say  her  body  thought. 

Or  in  Crashaw's  celebrated  line  about  the 
miracle  at  Cana : 

Nympha  pudica  deum  vidit  et  erubuit, 

Englished  by  Dryden  as 

The  conscious  water  saw  its  God  and  blushed. 

But  except  in  such  rarely  felicitous  in- 
stances, this  manner  of  writing  is  deplorable. 
Some  of  its  most  flagrant  offenses  are  still 
notorious.  Crashaw's  description  of  Mary 
Magdalene's  eyes  as : 

Two  walking  baths,  two  weeping  motions, 
Portable  and  compendious  oceans. 

Or  Carew's  lines  on  Maria  Wentworth : 

Else  the  soul  grew  so  fast  within 
It  burst  the  outward  shell  of  sin. 
And  so  was  hatched  a  cherubin. 

Cowley  is  full  of  these  tasteless,  unnatural 
conceits.  His  sins  of  the  kind  have  been  so 
insisted  upon  by  Johnson  and  others  that  I 
need  give  but  a  single  illustration.  In  an  ode 
to  his  friend,  Dr.  Scarborough,  he  thus  com- 
pliments him  upon  his  skill  in  operating  for 
calculus : 

201 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

The  cruel  stone,  that  restless  pain, 

That's  sometimes  rolled  away  in  vain 

But  still,  like  Sisyphus  his  stone,  returns  again. 

Thou   break'st   and   melt'st   by   learned   juices' 

force 
(A  greater  work,  though  short  the  way  ajjpear, 

Than   Hannibal's  by  vinegar). 
Oppressed  Nature's  necessary  course 
It  stops  in  vain ;  like  Moses,  thou 
Strik'st  but  the  rock,  and  straight  the  waters 

freely  flow. 

Here,  in  a  passage  of  nine  lines,  the  stone 
which  the  doctor  removes  from  his  patient's 
bladder  is  successively  compared  to  the  stone 
rolled  away  from  Christ's  sepulchre,  the 
stone  of  Sisyphus,  the  Alps  that  Hannibal 
split  with  vinegar,  and  the  rock  which  Moses 
smote  for  water.  Manifestly  this  way  of  writ- 
ing lends  itself  least  of  all  to  the  poetry  of 
passion.  Cowley's  love  poems  are  his  very 
worst  failures.  One  can  take  a  kind  of  pleas- 
ure in  the  sheer  mental  exercise  of  tracking 
the  thought  through  one  of  his  big  Pindaric 
odes — the  kind  of  pleasure  one  gets  from 
solving  a  riddle  or  an  equation,  but  not  the 
kind  which  we  ask  of  poetry.  It  is  as  Pope 
says:  his  epic  and  Pindaric  art  is  forgotten; 
forgotten  the  four  books,  in  rimed  couplets, 
of  the  "Davideis";  forgotten  the  odes  on 
Brutus,  on  the  plagues  of  Egypt,  on  his 
Majesty's  restoration,  to  Mr.  Hobbes,  and 
202 


ABRAHAM  COWLEY 
to  the  Royal  Society.  Cowley  had  a  genius 
for  friendship,  and  his  elegies  are  among  his 
best  things.  There  are  passages  well  worthy 
of  remembrance  in  his  elegy  on  Crashaw,  and 
several  fine  stanzas  in  his  memorial  verses  on 
his  Cambridge  friend  Hervey;  though  the 
piece,  as  a  whole,  is  too  long,  and  Dr.  John- 
son is  probably  singular  in  preferring  it  to 
"Lycidas."  A  hundred  readers  are  familiar 
with  the  invocation  to  light  in  "Paradise 
Lost,"  for  one  who  knows  Cowley's  ingenious 
and,  in  many  parts,  really  beautiful  "Hymn 
to  Light." 

The  only  writings  of  Cowley  which  keep 
afloat  on  time's  current  are  his  simplest  and 
least  ambitious — what  Pope  called  "the  lan- 
guage of  his  heart."  His  prose  essays  may 
still  be  read  with  enjoyment,  though  Lowell 
somewhat  cruelly  describes  them  as  Mon- 
taigne and  water.  His  translations  from  the 
Pseudo-Anacreon  are  standard,  particularly 
the  first  ode,  Se\(o  Xeyeiv  'ArpeiSa?  ;  the 
Terrt^,  or  cicada;  and  the  ode  in  praise  of 
drinking,  *H  yrj  fxekcuva  trivei.  There  is  one 
little  poem  which  remains  an  anthology 
favorite,  "The  Chronicle,"  Cowley's  solitary 
experiment  in  society  verse,  a  catalogue  of 
the  quite  imaginary  ladies  with  whom  he  has 
been  in  love.  This  is  well  enough,  but  com- 
pared with  the  "agreeable  impudence,"  the 
Cavalier  gaj^ety  and  ease  of  a  genuine  society 
203 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
verser,  like  Suckling,  it  is  sufficiently  tame. 
For  the  Cowleian  wit  is  so  different  from  the 
spirit  of  comedy  that  one  would  have  pre- 
dicted that  anything  which  he  might  under- 
take for  the  stage  would  surely  fail.  Never- 
theless, one  of  his  plays,  "Cutter  of  Coleman 
Street,"  has  been  selected  by  Professor  Gay- 
ley  for  his  series  of  representative  comedies, 
as  a  noteworthy  transition  drama,  with  "po- 
litical and  religious  satire  of  great  impor- 
tance." 

The  scene  is  London  in  1658,  the  year 
when  Cromwell  died,  and  Cowley,  though 
under  bonds,  escaped  a  second  time  to  Paris. 
The  plot  in  outline  is  this :  Colonel  Jolly,  a 
gentleman  whose  estate  was  confiscated  in  the 
late  troubles  for  taking  part  with  the  King 
at  Oxford,  finds  himself  in  desperate  straits 
for  money.  He  has  two  disreputable  hangers- 
on,  "merry,  sharking  fellows  about  the 
town,"  who  have  been  drinking  and  feasting 
at  his  expense.  One  of  these.  Cutter  of  Cole- 
man Street,  pretends  to  have  been  a  colonel 
in  the  royal  army  and  to  have  fought  at  New- 
bury— the  action,  it  will  be  remembered,  in 
which  Clarendon's  friend,  Lord  Falkland, 
met  his  tragic  death  (1643)  ;  or,  as  Carlyle 
rather  brutally  puts  it,  "Poor  Lord  Falk- 
land, in  his  'clean  shirt,'  was  killed  here." 
Worm,  the  other  rascal,  professes  likewise  to 
have  been  in  the  King's  service  and  to  have 
204 


ABRAHAM  COWLEY 

been  at  Worcester  and  shared  in  the  roman- 
tic escape  of  the  royal  fugitive.  This  precious 
pair  are  new  types  in  English  comedy  and 
are  evidently  from  the  life.  They  represent 
the  class  of  swashbucklers,  impostors,  and 
soldiers  of  fortune,  who  lurked  about  the 
lowest  purlieus  of  London  during  the  inter- 
regnum, living  at  free  quarters  on  loyalist 
sympathizers.  They  were  parodies  of  the 
true  "distressed  Cavaliers,"  such  as  Colonel 
Richard  Lovelace,  who  died  in  London  in 
this  same  year,  1658,  in  some  obscure  lodg- 
ing and  in  abject  poverty,  having  spent  all 
his  large  fortune  in  the  King's  cause. 

When  "Cutter  of  Coleman  Street"*  was 
first  given  in  1661,  the  characters  of  Cutter 
and  Worm  were  ill  received  by  the  audience 
at  the  Duke's  Theatre ;  and,  in  his  preface  to 
the  printed  play,  the  author  defended  himself 
against  the  charge  "that  it  was  a  piece  in- 
tended for  abuse  and  satire  against  the  king's 
party.  Good  God!  Against  the  king's  party! 
After  having  served  it  twenty  years,  during 
all  the  time  of  their  misfortunes  and  afflic- 
tions, I  must  be  a  very  rash  and  imprudent 
person  if  I  chose  out  that  of  their  restitution 
to  begin  a  quarrel  with  them."  The  repre- 
sentation of  those  two  scoundrels,  "as  pre- 
tended officers  of  the  royal  army,  was  made 

*An  earlier  version,  entitled  "The  Guardian,"  had 
been  acted  in  1641. 

205 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
for  no  other  purpose  but  to  show  the  world 
that  the  vices  and  extravagancies  imputed 
vulgarly  to  the  cavaliers  were  really  com- 
mitted by  aliens  who  only  usurped  that 
name." 

Colonel  Jolly  is  guardian  to  his  niece, 
Lucia,  who  has  an  inheritance  of  five  thou- 
sand pounds  which,  by  the  terms  of  her 
father's  will,  is  to  be  forfeited  if  she  marries 
without  her  uncle's  consent.  This  is  now  a 
very  stale  bit  of  dramatic  convention.  Ex- 
perienced play  readers  do  not  need  to  be 
reminded  that  "forfeited  if  transferred"  is 
written  large  over  the  fortune  of  nearly  every 
heiress  in  eighteenth  century  comedy.  Colonel 
Jolly  sees  through  his  rascally  followers,  but 
is  so  reduced  in  purse  that  he  offers  Lucia's 
hand  to  whichever  of  the  two  can  gain  her 
consent,  on  condition  that  the  favored  suitor 
will  make  over  to  him  one  thousand  pounds 
out  of  his  niece's  dowry.  Of  course  she  re- 
jects both  of  them.  This  unprincipled  bar- 
gain was  quite  properly  censured  as  out  of 
keeping  with  the  character  of  an  honorable 
old  Cavalier  gentleman  who  had  fought  for 
the  King.  And  again  the  dramatist  defends 
himself  in  his  preface.  "They  were  angry 
that  the  person  whom  I  made  a  true  gentle- 
man and  one  both  of  considerable  quality  and 
sufferings  in  the  royal  party  .  .  .  should 
submit,  in  his  great  extremities,  to  wrong  his 
206 


ABRAHAM  COWLEY 
niece  for  his  own  relief.  .  .  .  The  truth  is  I 
did  not  intend  the  character  of  a  hero  .  .  . 
but  an  ordinary  jovial  gentleman,  commonly 
called  a  good  fellow,  one  not  so  conscientious 
as  to  starve  rather  than  do  the  least  injury." 
The  failure  of  his  plan  puts  the  colonel 
upon  an  almost  equally  desperate  enterprise, 
which  is  no  less  than  to  espouse  the  widow 
of  Fear-the-Lord  Barebottle,  a  saint  and  a 
soap-boiler,  who  had  bought  Jolly's  confis- 
cated estate,  and  whose  name  is  an  evident 
allusion  to  the  leather-seller,  Praise-God 
Barebones,  who  gave  baptism  to  the  famous 
Barebones'  Parliament.  The  colonel  succeeds 
in  this  matrimonial  venture ;  although,  to  in- 
gratiate himself  with  the  soap-boiler's  widow, 
he  has  to  feign  conversion.  His  daughter 
Aurelia  tries  to  dissuade  him  from  the  match. 
"Bless  us,"  she  says,  "what  humming  and 
hawing  will  be  in  this  house ;  what  preaching 
and  howling  and  fasting  and  eating  among 
the  saints !  Their  first  pious  work  will  be  to 
banish  Fletcher  and  Ben  Jonson  out  o'  the 
parlour,  and  bring  in  their  rooms  Martin 
Mar  Prelate  and  Posies  of  Holy  Honey- 
suckles and  A  Salve-Box  for  a  wounded 
Conscience  and  a  Bundle  of  Grapes  from 
Canaan.  .  .  .  But,  Sir,  suppose  the  king 
should  come  in  again  and  you  have  your  own 
again  of  course.  You'd  be  very  proud  of  a 
soap-boiler's  widow  then  in  Hyde  Park,  Sir." 
207 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

"O,"  replies  her  father,  "then  the  bishops 
will  come  in,  too,  and  she'll  away  to  New 
England." 

Here  comes  in  the  satire  on  the  Puritans 
which  is  the  most  interesting  feature  of  the 
play.  Anti-Puritan  satire  was  nothing  new 
on  the  stage  in  1661,  and  it  had  been  much 
better  done  in  Jonson's  "Alchemist"  and 
"Bartholomew  Fair"  nearly  a  half  century 
before.  The  thing  that  is  new  in  Cowlej^'s 
play  is  its  picture  of  the  later  aspects  of  the 
Puritan  revolution;  when  what  had  been  in 
Jonson's  time  a  despised  faction  had  now 
been  seated  in  power  for  sixteen  years,  and 
had  developed  all  those  extravagances  of 
fanaticism  which  Carlyle  calls  "Calvinistic 
Sansculottism."  Widow  Barebottle  is  a 
Brownist  and  a  parishioner  of  Rev.  Joseph 
Knockdown,  of  the  congregation  of  the  spot- 
less in  Coleman  Street.  But  her  daughter 
Tabitha  is  of  the  Fifth  Monarchy  persuasion 
and  was  wont  to  go  afoot  every  Sunday  over 
the  bridge  to  hear  Mr.  Feak,*  when  he  was  a 
prisoner  in  Lambeth  House.  Visions  and  pro- 
phesyings  have  been  vouchsafed  to  Tabitha. 
And  when  Cutter,  following  his  patron's  lead, 
pays  court  to  her  in  a  puritanical  habit,  he 
assures  her  that  it  has  been  revealed  to  him 
that  he  is  no  longer  to  be  called  Cutter,  a 

•An   Anabaptist    preacher.    See   Carlyle's    "Crom- 
well's Letters  and  Speeches,"  iv.  3. 

208 


ABRAHAM  COWLEY 

name  of  Cavalero  darkness :  "My  name  is 
now  Abednego.  I  had  a  vision,  which  whis- 
pered to  me  through  a  keyhole,  'Go  call  thy- 
self Abednego.  It  is  a  name  that  signifies  fiery 
furnaces  and  tribulation  and  martyrdom.'  " 
He  is  to  suffer  martyrdom  and  return  mirac- 
ulously upon  "a  purple  dromedary,  which 
signifies  magistracy,  with  an  axe  in  my  hand 
that  is  called  reformation ;  and  I  am  to  strike 
with  that  axe  upon  the  gate  of  Westminster 
Hall  and  cry  'Down,  Babylon,'  and  the  build- 
ing called  Westminster  Hall  is  to  run  away 
and  cast  itself  into  the  river;  and  then  Major 
General  Harrison  is  to  come  in  green  sleeves 
from  the  north  upon  a  sky-colored  mule 
which  signifies  heavenly  instruction  .  .  .  and 
he  is  to  have  a  trumpet  in  his  mouth  as  big 
as  a  steeple  and,  at  the  sounding  of  that 
trumpet,  all  the  churches  in  London  shall 
fall  down  .  .  .  and  then  Venner  shall  march 
up  to  us  from  the  west  in  the  figure  of  a  wave 
of  the  sea,  holding  in  his  hand  a  ship  that 
shall  be  called  the  ark  of  the  reformed." 

All  this  is  frankly  farcical  but  has  a  cer- 
tain historical  basis.  The  Venner  here  men- 
tioned was  a  Fifth  Monarchist  cooper  whose 
followers  held  a  rendezvous  at  Mile-End 
Green,  and  who  issued  a  pamphlet  entitled 
"A  Standard  Set  Up,"  adopting  as  his  ensign 
the  Lion  of  the  Tribe  of  Judah,  with  the 
motto,  "Who  shall  rouse  him  up.'"'  The  pas- 
209 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
sage  furthermore  seems  to  allude  to  one  John 
Davy,  to  whom  in  1654  the  spirit  revealed 
that  his  true  name  was  Theauro  John;  and 
who  was  arrested  at  the  door  of  the  Parlia- 
ment House  for  knocking  and  laying  about 
him  with  a  drawn  sword.  "Poor  Davy," 
comments  Carlyle,  "his  labors,  life-adven- 
tures, financial  arrangements,  painful  biog- 
raphy in  general,  are  all  unknown  to  us ;  till, 
on  this  'Saturday,  30th  December,  1654,'  he 
very  clearly  knocks  loud  at  the  door  of  the 
Parliament  House,  as  much  as  to  say,  'what 
is  this  you  are  upon?'  and  'lays  about  him 
with  a  drawn  sword.'  " 

The  dialogue  abounds  in  the  biblical 
phrases  and  the  peculiar  cant  of  the  later 
Puritanism,  familiar  in  "Hudibras."  Brother 
Abednego  is  joined  to  Tabitha  in  the  holy 
bond  of  sanctified  matrimony  at  a  zealous 
shoemaker's  habitation  by  that  chosen  ves- 
sel. Brother  Zephaniah  Fats,  an  opener  of 
revelations  to  the  worthy  in  Mary  White- 
Chapel.  But  as  soon  as  they  are  safely 
married,  the  newly  converted  Cutter  throws 
off  his  Puritan  disguise  and  dons  a  regular 
Cavalier  costume,  hat  and  feather,  sword  and 
belt,  broad  laced  band  and  periwig,  and  pro- 
ceeds to  pervert  his  bride.  He  makes  her 
drink  healths  in  sack,  and  sing  and  dance 
home  after  the  fiddlers,  under  the  threat  of 
taking  coach  and  carrying  her  off  to  the 
210 


ABRAHAM  COWLEY 

opera.  Tabitha,  after  a  faint  resistance, 
falls  into  his  humor  and  proves  an  apt  pupil 
in  the  ways  of  worldliness.  For  it  is  a  con- 
vention of  seventeenth  century,  as  it  is  of 
twentieth  century,  comedy  that  all  Puritans 
are  hypocrites  and  that 

Every  woman  is  at  heart  a  rake. 


211 


MILTON'S  TERCENTENARY 

T  T  is  right  that  this  anniversary  should  be 
-*-  kept  in  all  English-speaking  lands.  Mil- 
ton is  as  far  away  from  us  in  time  as  Dante 
was  from  him;  destructive  criticism  has  been 
busy  with  his  great  poem;  formidable  rivals 
of  his  fame  have  arisen — Dryden  and  Pope, 
Wordsworth  and  Byron,  Tennyson  and 
Browning,  not  to  speak  of  lesser  names — 
poets  whom  we  read  perhaps  oftener  and 
with  more  pleasure.  Yet  still  his  throne  re- 
mains unshaken.  By  general — by  well-nigh 
universal — consent,  he  is  still  the  second  poet 
of  our  race,  the  greatest,  save  one,  of  all  who 
have  used  the  English  speech. 

The  high  epics,  the  Iliad,  the  Divine  Com- 
edy, do  not  appear  to  us  as  they  appeared  to 
their  contemporaries,  nor  as  they  appeared 
to  the  Middle  Ages,  or  to  the  men  of  the 
Renaissance  or  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
These  peaks  of  song  we  see  foreshortened  or 
in  changed  perspective  or  from  a  different 
angle  of  observation.  Their  parallax  varies 
from  age  to  age,  yet  their  stature  does  not 
dwindle;  they  tower  forever,  "like  Teneriffe 
or  Atlas  unremoved."  "Paradise  Lost"  does 
213 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
not  mean  the  same  thing  to  us  that  it  meant 
to  Addison  or  Johnson  or  Macaulay,  and 
much  that  those  critics  said  of  it  now  seems 
mistaken.  Works  of  art,  as  of  nature,  have 
perishable  elements,  and  suffer  a  loss  from 
time's  transshifting.  Homer's  gods  are  child- 
ish, Dante's  hell  grotesque;  and  the  mythol- 
ogy of  the  one  and  the  scholasticism  of  the 
other  are  scarcely  more  obsolete  to-day  than 
Milton's  theology.  Yet  in  the  dryest  parts 
of  "Paradise  Lost"  we  feel  the  touch  of  the 
master.  Two  things  in  particular,  the 
rhythm  and  the  style,  go  on  victoriously  as 
by  their  own  momentum.  God  the  Father 
may  be  a  school  divine  and  Adam  a  member 
of  parliament,  but  the  verse  never  flags,  the 
diction  never  fails.  The  poem  may  grow 
heavy,  but  not  languid,  thin,  or  weak.  I  con- 
fess that  there  are  traits  of  Milton  which 
repel  or  irritate;  that  there  are  poets  with 
whom  sympathy  is  easier.  And  if  I  were 
speaking  merely  as  an  impressionist,  I  might 
prefer  them  to  him.  But  this  does  not  affect 
my  estimate  of  his  absolute  greatness. 

All  poets,  then,  and  lovers  of  poetry,  all 
literary  critics  and  students  of  language 
must  honor  in  Milton  the  almost  faultless 
artist,  the  supreme  master  of  his  craft.  But 
there  is  a  reason  why,  not  alone  the  literary 
class,  but  all  men  of  English  stock  should 
celebrate  Milton's  tercentenary.  There  have 
214 


MILTON'S  TERCENTENARY 

been  poets  whose  technique  was  exquisite, 
but  whose  character  was  contemptible.  John 
Milton  was  not  simply  a  great  poet,  but  a 
great  man,  a  heroic  soul ;  and  his  type  was 
characteristically  English,  both  in  its  virtues 
and  its  shortcomings.  Of  Shakespeare,  the 
man,  we  know  next  to  nothing.  But  of  Mil- 
ton personally  we  know  all  that  we  need  to 
know,  more  than  is  known  of  many  a  modern 
author.  There  is  abundance  of  biography 
and  autobiography.  Milton  had  a  noble  self- 
esteem,  and  he  was  engaged  for  twenty  years 
in  hot  controversies.  Hence  those  passages 
of  apologetics  scattered  through  his  prose 
works,  from  which  the  lives  of  their  author 
have  been  largely  compiled.  Moreover  he 
was  a  pamphleteer  and  journalist,  as  well 
as  a  poet,  uttering  himself  freely  on  the  ques- 
tions of  the  day.  We  know  his  opinions  on 
government,  education,  religion,  marriage 
and  divorce,  the  freedom  of  the  press,  and 
many  other  subjects.  We  know  what  he 
thought  of  eminent  contemporaries,  Charles 
I,  Cromwell,  Vane,  Desborough,  Overton, 
Fairfax,  It  was  not  then  the  fashion  to 
write  critical  essays,  literary  reviews,  and 
book  notices.  Yet,  aside  from  his  own  prac- 
tice, his  writings  are  sown  here  and  there 
with  incidental  judgments  of  books  and  au- 
thors, from  which  his  literary  principles  may 
be  gathered.  He  has  spoken  now  and  again 
215 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

of  Shakespeare  and  Ben  Jonson,  of  Spenser, 
Chaucer,  Euripides,  Homer,  the  book  of  Job, 
the  psalms  of  David,  the  Song  of  Solomon, 
the  poems  of  Tasso  and  Ariosto,  the  Arthur 
and  Charlemagne  romances:  of  Bacon  and 
Selden,  the  dramatic  unities,  blank  verse  vs. 
rhyme,  and  similar  topics. 

In  some  aspects  and  relations,  harsh  and 
unlovely,  egotistical  and  stubborn,  the  total 
impression  of  Milton's  personality  is  singu- 
larly imposing.  His  virtues  were  manly  vir- 
tues. Of  the  four  cardinal  moral  virtues, — 
the  so-called  Aristotelian  virtues, — temper- 
ance, justice,  fortitude,  prudence,  which 
Dante  symbolizes  by  the  group  of  stars — 

Non  viste  mai  fuor  eh'  alia  prima  gente — 

Milton  had  a  full  share.  He  was  not  always, 
though  he  was  most  commonly,  just.  Pru- 
dence, the  only  virtue,  says  Carlyle,  which 
gets  its  reward  on  earth,  prudence  he  had, 
yet  not  a  timid  prudence.  Of  temperance — 
the  Puritan  virtue — and  all  that  it  includes, 
chastity,  self- reverence,  self-control,  "Comus" 
is  the  beautiful  hymn.  But,  above  all,  Mil- 
ton had  the  heroic  virtue,  fortitude;  not 
only  passively  in  the  proud  and  sublime  en- 
durance of  the  evil  days  and  evil  tongues  on 
which  he  had  fallen;  of  the  darkness,  dan- 
gers, solitude  that  compassed  him  round ;  but 
actively  in  "the  unconquerable  will  .  .  .  and 
216 


MILTON'S  TERCENTENARY 

courage  never  to  submit  or  yield" ;  the  cour- 
age which  "bates  no  jot  of  heart  or  hope,  but 
still  bears  up  and  steers  right  onward." 

There  is  nothing  more  bracing  in  English 
poetry  than  those  passages  in  the  sonnets,  in 
"Paradise  Lost"  and  in  "Samson  Agonistes" 
where  Milton  speaks  of  his  blindness.  Yet 
here  it  is  observable  that  Milton,  who  is  never 
sentimental,  is  also  never  pathetic  but  when 
he  speaks  of  himself,  in  such  lines,  e.g.,  as 
Samson's 

My  race  of  glory  run,  and  race  of  shame. 
And  I  shall  shortly  be  with  them  that  rest. 

Dante  has  this  same  touching  dignity  in 
alluding  to  his  own  sorrows ;  but  his  hard 
and  rare  pity  is  more  often  aroused  by  the 
sorrows  of  others :  by  Ugolino's  little  starv- 
ing children,  or  by  the  doom  of  Francesca 
and  her  lover.  Milton  is  untender.  Yet  vir- 
tue with  him  is  not  always  forbidding  and 
austere.  As  he  was  a  poet,  he  felt  the 
"beauty  of  holiness,"  though  in  another  sense 
than  Archbishop  Laud's  use  of  that  famous 
phrase.  It  was  his  "natural  haughtiness," 
he  tells  us,  that  saved  him  from  sensuality 
and  base  descents  of  mind.  His  virtue  was  a 
kind  of  good  taste,  a  delicacy  almost  wom- 
anly. It  is  the  "Lady  of  Christ's"  speaking 
with  the  lips  of  the  lady  in  "Comus,"  who 
says, 

217 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

— That  which  is  not  good  is  not  delicious 
To  a  well  governed  and  wise  appetite. 

But  there  is  a  special  fitness  in  this  com- 
memoration at  this  place.  For  Milton  is  the 
scholar  poet.  He  is  the  most  learned,  the 
most  classical,  the  most  bookish — I  was  about 
to  say  the  most  academic — of  English  poets ; 
but  I  remember  that  academic,  through  its 
use  in  certain  connections,  might  imply  a 
timid  conformity  to  rules  and  models,  a  lack 
of  vital  originality  which  would  not  be  true 
of  Milton.  Still,  Milton  was  an  academic 
man  in  a  broad  sense  of  the  word.  A  hard 
student  of  books,  he  injured  his  eyes  in  bo}'- 
hood  by  too  close  application,  working  every 
day  till  midnight.  He  spent  seven  years  at 
his  university.  He  was  a  teacher  and  a  writer 
on  education.  I  need  not  give  the  catalogue 
of  his  acquirements  further  than  to  say  that 
he  was  the  best  educated  Englishman  of  his 
generation. 

Mark  Pattison,  indeed,  who  speaks  for 
Oxford,  denies  that  Milton  was  a  regularly 
learned  man,  like  Usher  or  Selden.  That  is, 
I  understand,  he  had  made  no  exhaustive 
studies  in  professional  fields  of  knowledge 
such  as  patristic  theology  or  legal  antiqui- 
ties. Of  course  not:  Milton  was  a  poet:  he 
was  studying  for  power,  for  self-culture  and 
inspiration,  and  had  little  regard  for  a 
218 


MILTON'S  TERCENTENARY 

merely  retrospective  scholarship  which  would 
not  aid  him  in  the  work  of  creation. 

Be  that  as  it  may,  all  Milton's  writings  in 
prose  and  verse  are  so  saturated  with  learn- 
ing as  greatly  to  limit  the  range  of  their 
appeal.  A  poem  like  "Lycidas,"  loaded  with 
allusions,  can  be  fully  enjoyed  only  by  the 
classical  scholar  who  is  in  the  tradition  of 
the  Greek  pastoralists,  who  "knows  the 
Dorian  water's  gush  divine."  I  have  heard 
women  and  young  people  and  unlettered 
readers  who  have  a  natural  taste  for  poetry, 
and  enjoy  Burns  and  Longfellow,  object  to 
this  classical  stiffness  in  Milton  as  pedantry. 
Now  pedantry  is  an  ostentation  of  learning 
for  its  own  sake,  and  none  has  said  harder 
things  of  it  than  Milton. 

.    .   .  Who  reads 
Incessantly,  and  to  his  reading  brings  not 
A  spirit  and  judgment  equal  or  superior  .    .    . 
Uncertain  and  unsettled  still  remains. 
Deep-versed  in  books  and  shallow  in  himself. 

Cowley  was  the  true  pedant:  his  erudition 
was  crabbed  and  encumbered  the  free  move- 
ment of  his  mind,  while  Milton  made  his  the 
grace  and  ornament  of  his  verse. 

How  charming  is  divine  philosophy! 
Not  harsh  and  crabbed,  as  dull  fools  suppose, 
But  musical  as  is  Apollo's  lute. 
219 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
I  think  we  may  attribute  Milton's  apparent 
pedantry,  not  to  a  wish  for  display,  but  to 
an  imagination  familiarized  with  a  somewhat 
special  range  of  associations.  This  is  a  note 
of  the  Renaissance,  and  Milton's  culture  was 
Renaissance  culture.  That  his  mind  derived 
its  impetus  more  directly  from  books  than 
from  life;  that  his  pages  swarm  with  the 
figures  of  mythology  and  the  imagery  of  the 
ancient  poets  is  true.  In  his  youthful  poems 
he  accepted  and  perfected  Elizabethan,  that 
is,  Renaissance,  forms :  the  court  masque,  the 
Italian  sonnet,  the  artificial  pastoral.  But 
as  he  advanced  in  art  and  life,  he  became 
classical  in  a  severer  sense,  discarding  the 
Italianate  conceits  of  his  early  verse,  reject- 
ing rhyme  and  romance,  replacing  decora- 
tion with  construction;  and  finally,  in  his 
epic  and  tragedy  modelled  on  the  pure  an- 
tique, applying  Hellenic  form  to  Hebraic 
material.  His  political  and  social,  no  less 
than  his  literary,  ideals  were  classical.  The 
English  church  ritual,  with  its  Catholic  cere- 
monies ;  the  universities,  with  their  scholastic 
curricula;  the  feudal  monarchy,  the  mediae- 
val court  and  peerage — of  all  these  barbarous 
survivals  of  the  Middle  Ages  he  would  have 
made  a  clean  sweep,  to  set  up  in  their  stead 
a  commonwealth  modelled  on  the  democracies 
of  Greece  and  Rome,  schools  of  philosophy 
like  the  Academy  and  the  Porch,  and  volun- 
220 


MILTON'S  TERCENTENARY 

tary  congregations  of  Protestant  worshippers 
without  priest,  liturgy  or  symbol,  practising 
a  purely  rational  and  spiritual  religion.  He 
says  to  the  parliament :  "How  much  better  I 
find  ye  esteem  It  to  imitate  the  old  and  ele- 
gant humanity  of  Greece  than  the  barbaric 
pride  of  a  Hunnish  and  Norwegian  stateli- 
ness."  And  elsewhere:  "Those  ages  to  whose 
polite  wisdom  and  letters  we  owe  that  we  are 
not  yet  Goths  and  Jutlanders." 

So,  in  his  treatment  of  public  questions, 
Milton  had  what  Bacon  calls  "the  humor  of 
a  scholar."  He  was  an  idealist  and  a  doc- 
trinaire, with  little  historic  sense  and  small 
notion  of  what  is  practicable  here  and  now. 
England  Is  still  a  monarchy;  the  English 
church  Is  still  prelatical  and  has  its  hireling 
clergy;  parliament  keeps  Its  two  chambers, 
and  the  bishops  sit  and  vote  In  the  house  of 
peers;  ritualism  and  tractarlanism  gain 
apace  upon  low  church  and  evangelical;  the 
"Areopagltica"  had  no  effect  whatever  in 
hastening  the  freedom  of  the  press ;  and, 
ironically  enough,  Milton  himself,  under  the 
protectorate,  became  an  official  book  licenser. 

England  was  not  ripe  for  a  republic;  she 
was  returning  to  her  idols,  "choosing  herself 
a  captain  back  to  Egypt."  It  took  a  cen- 
tury and  a  half  for  English  liberty  to  recover 
the  ground  lost  at  the  Restoration.  Never- 
theless, that  little  group  of  republican  ideal- 
221 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

ists,  Vane,  Bradshaw,  Lambert  and  the  rest, 
with  Milton  their  literary  spokesman,  must 
always  interest  us  as  Americans  and  repub- 
licans. Let  us,  however,  not  mistake.  Mil- 
ton was  no  democrat.  His  political  princi- 
ples were  republican,  or  democratic  if  you 
please,  but  his  personal  feelings  were  in- 
tensely aristocratic.  Even  that  free  com- 
monwealth which  he  thought  he  saw  so  easy 
and  ready  a  way  to  establish,  and  the  consti- 
tution of  which  he  sketched  on  the  eve  of  the 
Restoration,  was  no  democracy,  but  an  aris- 
tocratic, senatorial  republic  like  Venice,  a 
government  of  the  optimates,  not  of  the  pop- 
ulace. For  the  trappings  of  royalty,  the 
pomp  and  pageantry,  the  servility  and 
flunkeyism  of  a  court,  Milton  had  the  con- 
tempt of  a  plain  republican: 

How  poor  their  outworn  coronets 
Beside  one  leaf  of  that  plain  civic  wreath ! 

But  for  the  people,  as  a  whole,  he  had  an 
almost  equal  contempt.  They  were  "the  un- 
grateful multitude,"  "the  inconsiderate  mul- 
titude," the  profaniun  vulgus,  "the  throng 
and  noises  of  vulgar  and  irrational  men." 
There  was  not  a  popular  drop  of  blood  in 
him.  He  had  no  faith  in  universal  suffrage 
or  majority  rule.  "More  just  it  is,"  he 
wrote,  "that  a  less  number  compel  a  greater 
to  retain  their  liberty,  than  that  a  greater 
222 


MILTON'S  TERCENTENARY 

number  compel  a  less  to  be  their  fellow 
slaves,"  i.e.,  to  bring  back  the  king  by  a 
pUbescite.  And  again :  "The  best  affected 
and  best  principled  of  the  people  stood  not 
numbering  or  computing  on  which  side  were 
most  voices  in  Parliament,  but  on  which  side 
appeared  to  them  most  reason." 

Milton  was  a  Puritan;  and  the  Puritans, 
though  socially  belonging,  for  the  most  part, 
among  the  plain  people,  and  though  made  by 
accident  the  champions  of  popular  rights 
against  privilege,  were  yet  a  kind  of  spiritual 
aristocrats.  Calvinistic  doctrine  made  of  the 
elect  a  chosen  few,  a  congregation  of  saints, 
set  apart  from  the  world.  To  this  feeling  of 
religious  exclusiveness  Milton's  pride  of  in- 
tellect added  a  personal  intensity.  He  re- 
spects distinction  and  is  always  rather  scorn- 
ful of  the  average  man,  the  pecus  ignavum 
silentum,  the  herd  of  the  obscure  an^  un- 
famed. 

Nor  do  I  name  of  men  the  common  rout 
That,  wandering  loose  about. 
Grow  up  and  perish  like  the  summer  fly, 
Heads  without  names,  no  more  remembered. 

Hazlitt  insisted  that  Shakespeare's  prin- 
ciples were  aristocratic,  chiefly,  I  believe,  be- 
cause of  his  handling  of  the  tribunes  and  the 
plebs  in  "Coriolanus."  Shakespeare  does  treat 
his  mobs  with  a  kindly  and  amused  contempt. 
223 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

They  are  fickle,  ignorant,  illogical,  thick- 
headed, easily  imposed  upon.  Still  he  makes 
you  feel  that  they  are  composed  of  good  fel- 
lows at  bottom,  quickly  placated  and  dis- 
posed to  do  the  fair  thing.  I  think  that 
Shakespeare's  is  the  more  democratic  nature; 
that  his  distrust  of  the  people  is  much  less 
radical  than  Milton's.  Walt  Whitman's  ob- 
streperous democracy,  his  all-embracing 
camaraderie,  his  liking  for  the  warm,  gre- 
garious pressure  of  the  crowd,  was  a  spirit 
quite  alien  from  his  whose  "soul  was  like  a 
star  and  dwelt  apart."  Anything  vulgar  was 
outside  or  below  the  sympathies  of  this  Puri- 
tan gentleman.  Falstaff  must  have  been 
merely  disgusting  to  him;  and  fancy  him 
reading  Mark  Twain !  In  Milton's  refer- 
ences to  popular  pastimes  there  is  always  a 
mixture  of  disapproval,  the  air  of  the  supe- 
rior person.  "The  people  on  their  holidays," 
says  Samson,  are  "impetuous,  insolent,  un- 
quenchable." "Methought,"  says  the  lady  in 
"Comus," 

...  it  was  the  sound 
Of  riot  and  ill  managed  merriment, 
Such  as  the  jocund  flute  or  gamesome  pipe 
Stirs  up  among  the  loose,  unlettered  hinds 
When,  for  their  teeming  flocks  and  granges  full, 
In  wanton  dance  they  praise  the  bounteous  Pan 
And  thank  the  gods  amiss. 
224 


MILTON'S  TERCENTENARY 

Milton  liked  to  be  in  the  minority,  to  bear 
up  against  the  pressure  of  hostile  opinion. 
"God  intended  to  prove  me,"  he  wrote, 
"whether  I  durst  take  up  alone  a  rightful 
cause  against  a  world  of  disesteem,  and  found 
I  durst."  The  seraph  Abdiel  is  a  piece  of 
self-portraiture;  there  is  no  more  character- 
istic passage  in  all  his  works : 

.   .   .  The  Seraph  Abdiel,  faithful  found 
Among  the  faithless,  faithful  only  he  .    .    . 
Nor  number  nor  example  with  him  wrought 
To  swerve   from  truth  or  change  his   constant 

mind, 
Though  single.  From  amidst  them  forth  he  past 
Long    way    through    hostile    scorn    which    he 

sustained 
Superior,  nor  of  violence  feared  aught; 
And  with  retorted  scorn  his  back  he  turned 
On    those    proud    towers    to    swift    destruction 

doomed. 

Milton  was  no  democrat ;  equality  and  fra- 
ternity were  not  his  trade,  though  liberty 
was  his  passion.  Liberty  he  defended  against 
the  tyranny  of  the  mob,  as  of  the  king.  He 
preferred  a  republic  to  a  monarchy,  since  he 
thought  it  less  likely  to  interfere  with  the  in- 
dependence of  the  private  citizen.  Political 
liberty,  liberty  of  worship  and  belief,  free- 
dom of  the  press,  freedom  of  divorce,  he 
asserted  them  all  in  turn  with  unsurpassed 
eloquence.  He  proposed  a  scheme  of  educa- 
225 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

tion  reformed  from  the  clogs  of  precedent  and 
authority.  Even  his  choice  of  blank  verse 
for  "Paradise  Lost"  he  vindicated  as  a  case 
of  "ancient  liberty  recovered  to  heroic  song 
from  this  troublesome  and  modern  bondage 
of  riming." 

There  is  yet  one  reason  more  why  we  at 
Yale  should  keep  this  anniversary.  Milton 
was  the  poet  of  English  Puritanism,  and 
therefore  he  is  our  poet.  This  colony  and 
this  college  were  founded  by  English  Puri- 
tans ;  and  here  the  special  faith  and  manners 
of  the  Puritans  survived  later  than  at  the 
other  great  university  of  New  England — 
survived  almost  in  their  integrity  down  to  a 
time  within  the  memory  of  living  men.  When 
Milton  left  Cambridge  in  1632,  "church- 
outed  by  the  prelates,"  it  was  among  the  pos- 
sibilities that,  instead  of  settling  down  at 
his  father's  country  house  at  Horton,  he 
might  have  come  to  New  England.  Winthrop 
had  sailed,  with  his  company,  two  years  be- 
fore. In  1635  three  thousand  Puritans  emi- 
grated to  Massachusetts,  among  them  Sir 
Henry  Vane,  the  younger, — the  "Vane,  young 
in  years,  but  in  sage  counsels  old,"  of  Mil- 
ton's sonnet, — ^who  was  made  governor  of  the 
colony  in  the  following  year.  Or  in  1638, 
the  year  of  the  settlement  of  New  Haven, 
when  Milton  went  to  Italy  for  culture,  it 
would  not  have  been  miraculous  had  he  come 
226 


MILTON'S  TERCENTENARY 

instead  to  America  for  freedom.  It  was  in 
that  same  year  that,  according  to  a  story 
long  believed  though  now  discredited,  Crom- 
well, Pym,  Hampden  and  Hazelrig,  despair- 
ing of  any  improvement  in  conditions  at 
home,  were  about  to  embark  for  New  England 
when  they  were  stopped  by  orders  in  council. 
Is  it  too  wild  a  dream  that  "Paradise  Lost" 
might  have  been  written  in  Boston  or  in  New 
Haven?  But  it  was  not  upon  the  cards.  The 
literary  class  does  not  willingly  emigrate  to 
raw  lands,  or  separate  itself  from  the  thick 
and  ripe  environment  of  an  old  civilization. 
However,  we  know  that  Vane  and  Roger  Wil- 
liams were  friends  of  Milton;  and  he  must 
have  known  and  been  known  to  Cromwell's 
chaplain,  Hugh  Peters,  who  had  been  in  New 
England;  and  doubtless  to  others  among 
the  colonists.  It  is,  at  first  sight,  therefore 
rather  strange  that  there  is  no  mention  of 
Milton,  so  far  as  I  have  observed,  in  any  of 
our  earlier  colonial  writers.  It  is  said,  I 
know  not  on  what  authority,  that  there  was 
not  a  single  copy  of  Shakespeare's  plays  in 
New  England  in  the  seventeenth  century. 
That  is  not  so  strange,  considering  the  Puri- 
tan horror  of  the  stage.  But  one  might  have 
expected  to  meet  with  mention  of  Milton,  as 
a  controversialist  if  not  as  a  poet.  The 
French  Huguenot  poet  Du  Bartas,  whose 
poem  "La  Semaine"  contributed  some  items 
227 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

to  the  account  of  the  creation  in  "Paradise 
Lost,"  was  a  favorite  author  in  New  Eng- 
land— I  take  it,  in  Sylvester's  translation, 
"The  Divine  Weeks  and  Works."  It  is  also 
said  that  the  "Emblems"  of  Milton's  con- 
temporary, Francis  Quarles,  were  much  read 
in  New  England.  But  Tyler  supposes  that 
Nathaniel  Ames,  in  his  Almanac  for  1725, 
"pronounced  there  for  the  first  time  the 
name  of  Milton,  together  with  chosen  pas- 
sages from  his  poems."  And  he  thinks  it 
worth  noting  that  Lewis  Morris,  of  Morris- 
ania,  ordered  an  edition  of  Milton  from  a 
London  bookseller  in  1739.* 

The  failure  of  our  forefathers  to  recognize 
the  great  poet  of  their  cause  may  be  ex- 
plained partly  by  the  slowness  of  the  growth 
of  Milton's  fame  in  England.  His  minor 
poems,  issued  in  1645,  did  not  reach  a  second 
edition  till  1673.  "Paradise  Lost,"  printed 
in  1667,  found  its  fit  audience,  though  few, 
almost  immediately.  But  the  latest  litera- 
ture travelled  slowly  in  those  days  into  a  re- 
mote and  rude  province.  Moreover,  the  edu- 
cated class  in  New  England,  the  ministers, 

*Mr.  Charles  Francis  Adams  informs  me  that  a 
letter  of  inquiry  sent  by  him  to  the  Evening  Post 
has  brought  out  three  or  four  references  to  Milton  in 
the  "Magnalia,"  besides  other  allusions  to  him  in  the 
publications  of  the  period.  Mr.  Adams  adds,  how- 
ever, that  there  is  nothing  to  show  that  "Paradise 
Lost"  was  much  read  in  New  England  prior  to  1750. 
The  "Magnalia"  was  published  in  1702. 

228 


MILTON'S  TERCENTENARY 
though  a  learned,  were  not  a  literary  set,  as 
is  abundantly  shown  by  their  own  experi- 
ments in  verse.  It  is  not  unlikely  that  Cot- 
ton Mather  or  Michael  Wigglesworth  would 
have  thought  Du  Bartas  and  Quarles  better 
poets  than  Milton  if  they  had  read  the  lat- 
ter's  works. 

We  are  proud  of  being  the  descendants  of 
the  Puritans ;  perhaps  we  are  glad  that  we 
are  their  descendants  only,  and  not  their  con- 
temporaries. Which  side  would  you  have 
been  on,  if  you  had  lived  during  the  English 
civil  war  of  the  seventeenth  century?  Doubt- 
less it  would  have  depended  largely  on 
whether  you  lived  in  Middlesex  or  in  Devon, 
whether  your  parents  were  gentry  or  trades- 
people, and  on  similar  accidents.  We  think 
that  we  choose,  but  really  choices  are  made 
for  us.  We  inherit  our  politics  and  our 
religion.  But  if  free  to  choose,  I  know  in 
which  camp  I  would  have  been,  and  it  would 
not  have  been  that  in  which  Milton's  friends 
were  found.  The  New  Model  array  had  the 
discipline — and  the  prayer  meetings.  I  am 
afraid  that  Rupert's  troopers  plundered, 
gambled,  drank,  and  swore  most  shockingly. 
There  was  good  fighting  on  both  sides,  but 
the  New  Model  had  the  right  end  of  the 
quarrel  and  had  the  victory,  and  I  am  glad 
that  it  was  so.  Still  there  was  more  fun 
229 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

in  the  king's  army,  and  it  was  there  that 
most  of  the  good  fellows  were. 

The  influence  of  Milton's  religion  upon  his 
art  has  been  much  discussed.  It  was  owing 
to  his  Puritanism  that  he  was  the  kind  of 
poet  that  he  was,  but  it  was  in  spite  of  his 
Puritanism  that  he  was  a  poet  at  all.  He 
was  the  poet  of  a  cause,  a  party,  a  sect 
whose  attitude  towards  the  graces  of  life  and 
the  beautiful  arts  was  notoriously  one  of 
distrust  and  hostility.  He  was  the  poet,  not 
only  of  that  Puritanism  which  is  a  permanent 
element  in  English  character,  but  of  much 
that  was  merely  temporary  and  local.  How 
sensitive  then  must  his  mind  have  been  to  all 
forms  of  loveliness,  how  powerful  the  creative 
instinct  in  him,  when  his  genius  emerged 
without  a  scar  from  the  long  struggle  of 
twenty  years,  during  which  he  had  written 
pamphlet  after  pamphlet  on  the  angry  ques- 
tions of  the  day,  and  nothing  at  all  in  verse 
but  a  handful  of  sonnets  mostly  provoked 
by  public  occasions ! 

The  fact  is,  there  were  all  kinds  of  Puri- 
tans. There  were  dismal  precisians,  like 
William  Prynne,  illiberal  and  vulgar  fanat- 
ics, the  Tribulation  Wholesomes,  Hope-on- 
high  Bombys,  and  Zeal-of-the-land  Busys, 
whose  absurdities  were  the  stock  in  trade  of 
contemporary  satirists  from  Jonson  to  But- 
ler. But  there  were  also  gentlemen  and 
230 


MILTON'S  TERCENTENARY 

scholars,  like  Fairfax,  Marvell,  Colonel 
Hutchinson,  Vane,  whose  Puritanism  was 
consistent  with  all  elegant  tastes  and  accom- 
plishments. Was  Milton's  Puritanism  hurt- 
ful to  his  art?  No  and  yes.  It  was  in  many 
ways  an  inspiration;  it  gave  him  zeal,  a 
Puritan  word  much  ridiculed  by  the  Royal- 
ists; it  gave  refinement,  distinction,  select- 
ness,  elevation  to  his  picture  of  the  world. 
But  it  would  be  uncritical  to  deny  that  it  also 
gave  a  certain  narrowness  and  rigidity  to  his 
view  of  human  life. 

It  is  curious  how  Milton's  early  poems 
have  changed  places  in  favor  with  "Paradise 
Lost."  They  were  neglected  for  over  a  cen- 
tury. Joseph  Warton  testifies  in  1756  that 
they  had  only  "very  lately  met  with  a  suit- 
able regard";  had  lain  "in  a  sort  of  obscur- 
ity, the  private  enjoyment  of  a  few  curious 
readers."  And  Dr.  Johnson  exclaims :  "Surely 
no  man  could  have  fancied  that  he  read 
*Lycidas'  with  pleasure,  had  he  not  known 
its  author."  There  can  be  little  doubt  that 
nowadays  Milton's  juvenilia  are  more  read 
than  "Paradise  Lost,"  and  by  many — per- 
haps by  a  majority  of  readers — rated  higher. 
In  this  opinion  I  do  not  share.  "Paradise 
Lost"  seems  to  me  not  only  greater  work, 
more  important,  than  the  minor  pieces,  but 
better  poetry,  richer  and  deeper.  Yet  one 
quality  these  early  poems  have  which  "Para- 
281 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

dise  Lost"  has  not — charm.  Milton's  epic 
astonishes,  moves,  delights,  but  it  does  not 
fascinate.  The  youthful  Milton  was  sensi- 
tive to  many  attractions  which  he  afterwards 
came  to  look  upon  with  stern  disapproval. 
He  went  to  the  theatre  and  praised  the  come- 
dies of  Shakespeare  and  Jonson ;  he  loved 
the  romances  of  chivalry  and  fairy  tales ;  he 
had  no  objection  to  dancing,  ale  drinking, 
the  music  of  the  fiddle,  and  rural  sports ;  he 
writes  to  Diodati  of  the  pretty  girls  on  the 
London  streets;  he  celebrates  the  Catholic 
and  Gothic  elegancies  of  English  church 
architecture  and  ritual,  the  cloister's  pale, 
the  organ  music  and  full-voiced  choir,  the 
high  embowed  roof,  and  the  storied  windows 
which  his  military  friends  were  soon  to  smash 
at  Ely,  Salisbury,  Canterbury,  Lichfield,  as 
popish  idolatries.  But  in  "Iconoclastes"  we 
find  him  sneering  at  the  king  for  keeping  a 
copy  of  Shakespeare  in  his  closet.  In  his 
treatise  "Of  Reformation"  he  denounces  the 
prelates  for  "embezzling  the  treasury  of  the 
church  on  painted  and  gilded  walls  of  tem- 
ples, wherein  God  hath  testified  to  have  no 
delight."  Evidently  the  Anglican  service 
was  one  of  those  "gay  religions,  rich  with 
pomp  and  gold,"  to  which  he  alludes  in 
"Paradise  Lost."  A  chorus  commends  Sam- 
son the  Nazarite  for  drinking  nothing  but 
water.  Modern  tragedies  are  condemned  for 
232 


MILTON'S  TERCENTENARY 

"mixing  comic  stuff  with  tragic  sadness  and 
gravity,  or  introducing  trivial  and  vulgar 
persons": — as  Shakespeare  does.  In  "Para- 
dise Lost"  the  poet  speaks  with  contempt  of 
the  romances  whose  "chief  mastery"  it  was 

...  to  dissect, 
With  long  and  tedious  havoc,  fabled  knights 
In  battles  feigned. 

And  in  "Paradise  Regained"  he  even  dis- 
parages his  beloved  classics,  preferring  the 
psalms  of  David,  the  Hebrew  prophecies  and 
the  Mosaic  law,  to  the  poets,  philosophers, 
and  orators  of  Athens. 

The  Puritans  were  Old  Testament  men. 
Their  God  was  the  Hebrew  Jehovah,  their 
imaginations  were  filled  with  the  wars  of 
Israel  and  the  militant  theocracy  of  the 
Jews.  In  Milton's  somewhat  patronizing  atti- 
tude toward  women,  there  is  something  Mo- 
saic— something  almost  Oriental.  He  always 
remained  susceptible  to  beauty  in  women, 
but  he  treated  it  as  a  weakness,  a  temp- 
tation. The  bitterness  of  his  own  marriage 
experience  mingles  with  his  words.  I  need 
not  cite  the  well-known  passages  about 
Dalila  and  Eve,  where  he  who  reads  between 
the  lines  can  always  detect  the  figure  of 
Mary  Powell.  There  is  no  gallantry  in  Mil- 
ton, but  a  deal  of  common  sense.  The  love 
of  the  court  poets,  cavaliers  and  sonneteers, 
233 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

their  hyperboles  of  passion,  their  abasement 
before  their  ladies  he  doubtless  scorned  as 
the  fopperies  of  chivalry,  fantastic  and  un- 
natural exaggerations,  the  insincerities  of 
"vulgar  amourists,"  the  fume  of    • 

.   .   .  court  amour, 
Mixt  dance,  or  wanton  mask,  or  midnight  ball, 
Or  serenate  which  the  starved  lover  sings 
To  his  proud  fair,  best  quitted  with  disdain. 

To  the  Puritan,  woman  was  at  best  the 
helpmate  and  handmaid  of  man.  Too  often 
she  was  a  snare,  or  a  household  fqe,  "a  cleav- 
ing mischief  far  within  defensive  arms." 
"L'Allegro"  and  "II  Penseroso"  are  the  only 
poems  of  Milton  in  which  he  surrenders  him- 
self spontaneously  to  the  joy  of  living,  to 
"unreproved  pleasures  free,"  with  no  arriere 
pensee,  or  intrusion  of  the  conscience.  Even 
in  those  pleasant  Horatian  lines  to  Lawrence, 
inviting  him  to  spend  a  winter  day  by  the 
fire,  drink  wine,  and  hear  music,  he  ends  with 
a  fine  Puritan  touch: 

He  who  of  these  delights  can  judge,  yet 

spare 
To  interpose  them  oft,  is  truly  wise. 

"Dost  thou  think,  because  thou  art  virtu- 
ous, there  shall  be  no  more  cakes  and  ale.'^" 
inquires  Sir  Toby  of  Shakespeare's  only 
Puritan. 


MILTON'S  TERCENTENARY 
"Yes,"  adds  the  clown,  "and  ginger  shall 
be  hot  in  the  mouth,  too."  And  "wives  may 
be  merry  and  yet  honest,"  asserts  Mistress 
Page. 

It  is  not  without  astonishment  that  one 
finds  Emerson  writing,  "To  this  antique 
heroism  Milton  added  the  genius  of  the 
Christian  sanctity  .  .  .  laying  its  chief 
stress  on  humility."  Milton  had  a  zeal  for 
righteousness,  a  noble  purity  and  noble  pride. 
But  if  you  look  for  saintly  humility,  for  the 
spirit  of  the  meek  and  lowly  Jesus,  the  spirit 
of  charity  and  forgiveness,  look  for  them  in 
the  Anglican  Herbert,  not  in  the  Puritan 
Milton.  Humility  was  no  fruit  of  the  system 
which  Calvin  begot  and  which  begot  John 
Knox.  The  Puritans  were  great  invokers  of 
the  sword  of  the  Lord  and  of  Gideon — the 
sword  of  Gideon  and  the  dagger  of  Ehud. 
There  went  a  sword  out  of  Milton's  mouth 
against  the  enemies  of  Israel,  a  sword  of 
threatenings,  the  wrath  of  God  upon  the 
ungodly.  The  temper  of  his  controversial 
writings  is  little  short  of  ferocious.  There 
was  not  much  in  him  of  that  "sweet  reason- 
ableness" which  Matthew  Arnold  thought  the 
distinctive  mark  of  Christian  ethics.  He  was 
devout,  but  not  with  the  Christian  devout- 
ness.  I  would  not  call  him  a  Christian  at  all, 
except,  of  course,  in  his  formal  adherence  to 
the  creed  of  Christianity.  Very  significant  is 
235 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
the  inferiority  of  "Paradise  Regained"  to 
"Paradise  Lost."  And  in  "Paradise  Lost" 
itself,  how  weak  and  faint  is  the  character  of 
the  Saviour!  You  feel  that  he  is  superfluous, 
that  the  poet  did  not  need  him.  He  is  simply 
the  second  person  of  the  Trinity,  the  execu- 
tive arm  of  the  Godhead;  and  Milton  is  at 
pains  to  invent  things  for  him  to  do — to 
drive  the  rebellious  angels  out  of  heaven,  to 
preside  over  the  six  days'  work  of  creation, 
etc.  I  believe  it  was  Thomas  Davidson  who 
said  that  in  "Paradise  Lost"  "Christ  is  God's 
good  boy." 

We  are  therefore  not  unprepared  to  dis- 
cover, from  Milton's  "Treatise  of  Christian 
Doctrine,"  that  he  had  laid  aside  the  dogma 
of  vicarious  sacrifice  and  was,  in  his  last 
years,  a  Unitarian.  It  was  this  Latin  treatise, 
translated  and  published  in  1824,  which 
called  out  Macaulay's  essay,  so  urbanely  de- 
molished by  Matthew  Arnold,  and  which  was 
triumphantly  reviewed  by  Dr.  Channing  in 
the  North  American.  It  was  lucky  for  Dr. 
Channing,  by  the  way,  that  he  lived  in  the 
nineteenth  century  and  not  in  the  seven- 
teenth. Two  Socinians,  Leggatt  and  Wight- 
man,  were  burned  at  the  stake  as  late  as 
James  the  First's  reign,  one  at  Lichfield  and 
the  other  at  Smithfield. 

Milton,  then,  does  not  belong  with  those 
broadly  human,  all  tolerant,  impartial   ar- 
236 


MILTON'S  TERCENTENARY 

tists,  who  reflect,  with  equal  sympathy  and 
infinite  curiosity,  every  phase  of  life:  with 
Shakespeare  and  Goethe  or,  on  a  lower  level, 
with  Chaucer  and  Montaigne;  but  with  the 
intense,  austere  and  lofty  souls  whose  nar- 
rowness is  likewise  their  strength.  His  place 
is  beside  Dante,  the  Catholic  Puritan. 


237 


SHAKESPEARE'S  CONTEMPORARIES 

THE  one  contribution  of  the  Elizabethan 
stage  to  the  literature  of  the  world  is 
the  plays  of  Shakespeare.  It  seems  un- 
accountable to  us  to-day  that  the  almost 
infinite  superiority  of  his  work  to  that  of 
all  his  contemporaries  was  not  recognized  in 
his  own  lifetime.  There  is  frequent  mention 
in  the  literature  of  his  time,  of  "the  excellent 
dramatic  writer,  Master  Wm.  Shakespeare" 
and  usually  in  the.  way  of  praise,  but  in  the 
same  category  with  other  excellent  dramatic 
writers,  like  Jonson,  Chapman,  Webster,  and 
Beaumont,  and  with  no  apparent  suspicion 
that  he  is  in  a  quite  different  class  from 
these,  and  forms  indeed  a  class  by  himself — 
is  sui  generis.  In  explanation  of  this  blind- 
ness it  should  be  said,  first  that  time  is  re- 
quired to  give  the  proper  perspective  to 
literary  values,  and  secondly  that  there  is  an 
absence  of  critical  documents  from  the 
Elizabethan  period.  There  were  no  reviews  or 
book  notices  or  literary  biographies.  A  man 
in  high  place  who  was  incidentally  an  author, 
a  great  philosopher  and  statesman  like 
Bacon,  a  diplomatist  and  scholar  like  Sir 
239 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
Henry  Wotton,  a  bishop  or  a  learned  divine, 
like  Sanderson,  Donne  or  Herbert,  might  be 
thought  worthy  to  have  his  life  recorded. 
But  a  mere  man  of  letters — still  more  a  mere 
playwriter — was  not  entitled  to  a  biograph3\ 
Nowadays  every  writer  of  fair  pretensions 
has  his  literary  portrait  in  the  magazines. 
His  work  is  criticized,  assayed,  analyzed; 
and  as  soon  as  he  is  dead,  his  life  and  letters 
appear  in  two  volumes.  We  do  not  know  what 
.  Shakespeare's  contemporaries  thought  of 
him,  except  for  a  few  complimentary  verses, 
and  a  few  brief  notices  scattered  through  the 
miscellaneous  books  and  pamphlets  of  the 
time;  and  these  in  no  wise  characterize  or 
distinguish  him,  or  set  him  apart  from  the 
crowd  of  fellow  playwrights,  from  among 
whom  he  has  since  so  thoroughly  emerged. 
Aside  from  the  almost  universal  verdict  of 
posterity  that  Shakespeare  is  one  of  the 
greatest,  if  not  actually  the  greatest  literary 
genius  of  all  time,  there  are  two  testimonies 
to  his  continued  vitality.  One  of  these  is  the 
fact  that  his  plays  have  never  ceased  to  be 
played.  At  least  twenty  of  his  plays  still 
belong  to  the  acted  drama.  Several  of  the 
othdrs,  less  popular,  are  revived  from  time 
to  time.  We  do  not  often  have  a  chance  in 
England  or  America  to  see  "Troilus  and 
Cressida,"  or  "Measure  for  Measure,"  or 
"Richard  II" — all  pieces  of  the  highest  in- 
240 


SHAKESPEARE'S  CONTEMPORARIES 

tellectual  interest — to  see  them  behind  the 
footlights.  But  all  of  Shakespeare's  thirty- 
seven  plays  are  given  annually  in  Germany. 
Indeed,  the  Germans  claim  to  have  appro- 
priated Shakespeare  and  to  have  made  him 
their  own. 

Now  the  only  seventeenth  century  play 
outside  of  Shakespeare  which  still  keeps  the 
stage  is  Massinger's  comedy,  "A  New  Way 
to  Pay  Old  Debts."  This  has  frequently  been 
given  in  America,  with  artists  like  Edwin 
Booth  and  E.  L.  Davenport  in  the  lead- 
ing role.  Sir  Giles  Overreach.  A  number  of 
the  plays  of  Ben  Jonson,  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher,  Dekker,  Heywood,  Middleton,  and 
perhaps  other  Elizabethan  dramatists  con- 
tinued to  be  played  down  to  the  middle  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  and  a  few  of  them  as 
late  as  1788.  Fletcher's  comedy,  "Rule  a 
Wife  and  Have  a  Wife,"  was  acted  in  1829; 
and  Dekker's  "Old  Fortunatus"*  enjoyed  a 
run  of  twelve  performances  in  1819.  But 
these  were  sporadic  revivals.  Professor  Gay- 
ley  concludes  that  of  the  two  hundred  and 
fifty    comedies,    exclusive   of    Shakespeare's, 

*"Every  Man  in  his  Humor"  lasted  well  down  into 
the  nineteenth  century  on  the  stage.  And  here  are  a 
few  haphazard  dates  of  late  performances  of  Eliza- 
bethan plays:  "The  Pilgrim,"  1812;  "Philaster,"  1817; 
"The  Chances,"  1820;  "The  Wild  Goose  Chase,"  1820; 
"The  City  Madam,"  1822;  "The  Humorous  Lieu- 
tenant," 1817;  "The  Spanish  Curate,"  1840. 

241 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

produced  between  1600  and  1625,  "only 
twenty-six  survived  upon  the  stage  in  the 
middle  of  the  eighteenth  century:  in  1825, 
five;  and  after  1850,  but  one, — 'A  New  Way 
to  Pay  Old  Debts,' — while  at  the  present  day 
no  fewer  than  sixteen  out  of  Shakespeare's 
seventeen  comedies  are  fixtures  upon  the 
stage."  Now  and  then  a  favorite  Elizabethan 
play  like  Ben  Jonson's  "Alchemist,"  or 
Dekker's  "Shoemaker's  Holiday,"  or  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher's  "Knight  of  the  Burning 
Pestle"  is  presented  by  amateurs  before  a 
college  audience  or  a  dramatic  club,  or  some 
other  semi-private  bunch  of  spectators. 
Middleton's  "Spanish  Gipsy"  was  thus  pre- 
sented in  1898  before  the  Elizabethan  Stage 
Society  and  was  rather  roughly  handled  by 
the  newspaper  critics.  But  these  are  literary 
curiosities  and  mean  something  very  different 
from  the  retention  of  a  play  on  the  repertoire 
of  the  professional  public  theatres.  It  is  a 
case  of  revival,  not  of  survival. 

But  even  if  Shakespeare's  plays  should 
cease  to  be  shown, — a  thing  by  no  means 
impossible,  since  theatrical  conditions 
change, — they  would  never  cease  to  be  read. 
Already  he  has  a  hundred  readers  for  one 
spectator.  And  one  proof  of  this  eternity  of 
fame  is  the  extent  to  which  his  language  has 
taken  possession  of  the  English  tongue.  In 
Bartlett's  "Dictionary  of  Quotations"  there . 
242 


SHAKESPEARE'S  CONTEMPORARIES 

are  over  one  hundred  and  twenty  pages  of 
citations  from  Shakespeare,  including  hun- 
dreds of  expressions  which  are  in  daily  use 
and  are  as  familiar  as  household  words. 
These  include  not  merely  maxims  and  sen- 
tences universally  current,  such  as  "Brevity 
is  the  soul  of  wit,"  "The  course  of  true  love 
never  did  run  smooth,"  "One  touch  of  nature 
makes  the  whole  world  kin,"  but  detached 
phrases :  "wise  saws  and  modern  instances," 
"a  woman's  reason,"  "the  sere,  the  yellow 
leaf,"  "damnable  iteration,"  "sighing  like  a 
furnace,"  "the  funeral  baked  meats,"  "the 
primrose  path  of  dalliance,"  "a  bright,  par- 
ticular star,"  "to  gild  refined  gold,  to  paint 
the  lily,"  "the  bubble  reputation,"  "Rich- 
ard's himself  again,"  "Such  stuff  as  dreams 
are  made  on."  There  is  only  one  other  book — 
the  English  Bible — which  has  so  wrought 
itself  into  the  very  tissue  of  our  speech.  This 
is  not  true  of  the  work  of  Shakespeare's  fel- 
low dramatists.  I  cannot,  at  the  moment, 
recall  any  words  of  theirs  that  have  this 
stamp  of  universal  currency  except  Chris- 
topher Marlowe's  "Love  me  little,  so  you  love 
me  long."  Coleridge  prophesied  that  the 
works  of  the  other  Elizabethan  playwrights 
would  in  time  be  reduced  to  notes  on  Shake- 
speare: i.e.,  they  would  be  used  simply  to 
illustrate  or  explain  difficult  passages  in 
Shakespeare's  text.  This  is  an  extreme  state- 
243 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
merit  and  I  cannot  believe  it  true.  For  the 
dramas  of  Ben  Jonson,  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher,  Marlowe,  Webster,  Middleton,  and 
many  others  will  never  lack  readers,  though 
they  will  find  them  not  among  general 
readers,  but  among  scholars,  men  of  letters, 
and  those  persons,  not  so  very  few  in  number, 
who  have  a  strong  appetite  for  plays  of  all 
kinds.  Moreover,  vast  as  is  the  distance  be- 
tween Shakespeare  and  his  contemporaries, 
historically  he  was  one  of  them.  The  stage 
was  his  occasion,  his  opportunity.  Without 
the  Elizabethan  theatre  there  would  have 
been  no  Shakespeare.  Let  us  seek  to  get  some 
idea,  then,  of  what  this  Elizabethan  drama 
was,  which  formed  the  Shakespearean  back- 
ground and  environment.  Of  course,  in  the 
short  space  at  my  disposal,  I  cannot  take  up 
individual  authors,  still  less  individual  plays. 
I  shall  have  to  give  a  very  general  outline  of 
the  matter  as  a  whole. 

What  is  loosely  called  the  Elizabethan 
drama,  consists  of  the  plays  written,  per- 
formed, or  printed  in  England  between  the 
accession  of  the  queen  in  1558  and  the  clos- 
ing of  the  theatres  by  the  Long  Parliament 
at  the  breaking  out  of  the  civil  war  in  1642. 
But  if  we  are  looking  for  work  of  literary 
and  artistic  value,  we  need  hardly  go  back  of 
1576,  the  date  of  the  building  of  the  first 
London  playhouse.  This  was  soon  followed 
244 


SHAKESPEARE'S  CONTEMPORARIES 

by  others  and  by  the  formation  of  permanent 
stock  companies.  Heretofore  there  had  been 
bands  of  strolling  players,  under  the  patron- 
age of  various  noblemen,  exhibiting  some- 
times at  court,  sometimes  in  innyards,  bear- 
baiting  houses,  and  cockpits,  and  even  in 
churches.  Plays  of  an  academic  character 
both  in  Latin  and  English  had  also  been  per- 
formed at  the  universities  and  the  inns  of 
court.  But  now  the  drama  had  obtained  a 
local  habitation  and  a  certain  professional 
independence.  Actors  and  playwriters  could 
make  a  living — some  of  them,  indeed,  like 
Burbage,  Alleyn,  and  Shakespeare  made  a 
very  substantial  living,  or  even  became  rich 
and  endowed  colleges  (Dulwich  College,  e.g.). 
One  Henslow,  an  owner  and  manager,  had  at 
one  time  three  theatres  going  and  a  long  list 
of  dramatic  authors  on  his  payroll;  was,  in 
short,  a  kind  of  Elizabethan  theatrical  syn- 
dicate, and  from  Henslow's  diary  we  learn 
most  of  what  we  know  about  the  business  side 
of  the  old  drama.  In  those  days  London  was 
a  walled  town  of  not  more  than  125,000  in- 
habitants. As  five  theatre  companies,  and 
sometimes  seven,  counting  the  children  of 
Paul's  and  of  the  Queen's  Chapel,  were  all 
playing  at  the  same  time,  a  public  of  that 
size  was  fairly  well  served.  You  have  doubt- 
less read  descriptions,  or  seen  pictures,  of 
these  old  playhouses,  The  Theatre,  The  Cur- 
245 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

tain,  The  Rose,  The  Swan,  The  Fortune,  The 
Globe,  The  Belle  Savage,  The  Red  Bull,  The 
Black  Friars.  They  varied  somewhat  in  de- 
tails of  structure  and  arrangement,  and 
some  points  about  them  are  still  uncertain, 
but  their  general  features  are  well  ascer- 
tained. They  were  built  commonly  outside 
the  walls,  at  Shoreditch  or  on  the  Bankside 
across  the  Thames,  in  order  to  be  outside  the 
jurisdiction  of  the  mayor  and  council,  who 
were  mostly  Puritan  and  were  continually 
trying  to  stop  the  show  business.  They  were 
of  wood,  octagonal  on  the  outside,  circular 
on  the  inside,  with  two  or  three  tiers  of  gal- 
leries, partitioned  off  in  boxes.  The  stage  and 
the  galleries  were  roofed,  but  the  pit,  or 
yard,  was  unroofed  and  unpaved;  the  ordi- 
nary, twopenny  spectators  unaccommodated 
with  seats  but  standing  on  the  bare  ground 
and  being  liable  to  a  wetting  if  it  rained.  The 
most  curious  feature  of  the  old  playhouse  to 
a  modern  reader  is  the  stage.  This  was  not, 
as  in  our  theatres,  a  recessed  or  picture 
frame  stage,  but  a  platform  stage,  which 
projected  boldly  out  into  the  auditorium. 
The  "groundlings"  or  yard  spectators,  sur- 
rounded it  on  three  sides,  and  it  was  about 
on  a  level  with  their  shoulders.  The  building 
specifications  for  The  Swan  playhouse  called 
for  an  auditorium  fifty-five  feet  across,  the 
stage  to  be  twenty-seven  feet  in  depth,  so 
246 


SHAKESPEARE'S  CONTEMPORARIES 
that  it  reached  halfway  across  the  pit,  and 
was  entirely  open  on  three  sides.  At  the  rear 
of  the  stage  was  a  traverse,  or  draw  curtain, 
with  an  alcove,  or  small  inner  stage  behind 
it,  and  a  balcony  overhead.  There  was  little 
or  no  scenery,  but  properties  of  various  kinds 
were  in  use,  chairs,  beds,  tables,  etc.  When 
it  is  added  to  this  that  shilling  spectators 
were  allowed  to  sit  upon  the  stage,  where  for 
an  extra  sixpence  they  were  accommodated 
with  stools,  and  could  send  the  pages  for 
pipes  and  tobacco,  and  that  from  this  van- 
tage ground  they  could  jeer  at  the  actors, 
and  exchange  jokes  and  sometimes  missiles, 
like  nuts  or  apples,  with  the  common  people 
in  the  pit,  why,  it  becomes  almost  incompre- 
hensible to  the  modern  mind  how  the  players 
managed  to  carry  on  the  action  at  all;  and 
fairly  marvellous  how  under  such  rude  condi- 
tions, the  noble  blank  verse  declamations  and 
delicate  graces  of  romantic  poetry  with 
which  the  old  dramas  abound  could  have  got 
past.  A  modern  audience  will  hardly  stand 
poetry,  or  anything,  in  fact,  but  brisk  action 
and  rapid  dialogue.  Cut  out  the  soliloquies, 
cut  out  the  reflections  and  the  descriptions. 
Elizabethan  plays  are  stuffed  with  full-length 
descriptions  of  scenes  and  places:  Dover 
Cliff;  the  apothecary's  shop  where  Romeo 
bought  the  poison;  the  brook  in  which 
Ophelia  drowned  herself;  the  forest  spring 
247 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
where  Philaster  found  Bellario  weeping  and 
playing  with  wild  flowers.  In  this  way  they 
make  up  for  the  want  of  stage  scenery.  It 
would  seem  as  if  the  seventeenth  century  au- 
diences were  more  naive  than  twentieth  cen- 
tury ones,  more  willing  to  lend  their  imagina- 
tions to  the  artist,  more  eager  for  strong 
sensation  and  more  impressible  by  beauty  of 
language,  and  less  easily  disturbed  by  the 
incongruous  and  the  absurd  in  the  external 
machinery  of  the  theatre,  which  would  be 
fatal  to  illusion  in  modern  audiences  with 
our  quick  sense  of  the  ridiculous.  You  know, 
for  example,  that  there  were  no  actresses  on 
the  Elizabethan  stage,  but  the  female  parts 
were  taken  by  boys.  This  is  one  practical 
reason  for  those  numerous  plots  in  the  old 
drama  where  the  heroine  disguises  herself  as 
a  young  man.  I  need  mention  only  Viola, 
Portia,  Rosalind,  Imogen,  and  Julia  in 
Shakespeare.  And  the  romantic  plays  of 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher  and  many  others  are 
full  of  similar  situations.  Now  if  you  have 
seen  college  dramatics,  where  the  same  prac- 
tice obtains,  you  have  doubtless  noticed  an 
inclination  in  the  spectators  to  laugh  at  the 
deep  bass  voices,  the  masculine  strides,  and 
the  muscular  arms  of  the  ladies  in  the  play. 
But  trifles  like  these  did  not  apparently 
trouble  our  simple  forefathers. 

In  the  eighty-four  years  from  the  begin- 
248 


SHAKESPEARE'S  CONTEMPORARIES 

ning  of  Elizabeth's  reign  to  the  closing  of 
the  theatres  we  know  the  names  of  200 
writers  who  contributed  to  the  stage,  and 
there  were  beside  many  anonymous  pieces. 
All  told,  there  were  produced  over  1500 
plays;  and  if  we  count  masques  and  pag- 
eants, and  court  and  university  plays,  and 
other  quasi-dramatic  species  the  number  does 
not  fall  much  short  of  2000.  Less  than  half 
of  these  are  now  extant.  It  is  not  probable 
that  any  important  play  of  Shakespeare's  is 
lost,  although  no  collection  of  his  plays  was 
made  until  1623,  seven  years  after  his  death. 
Meanwhile  about  half  of  them  had  come  out 
singly  in  small  quartos,  surreptitiously  is- 
sued and  very  incorrectly  printed.  We  prob- 
ably have  all,  or  nearly  all,  of  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher's  fifty-three  plays.  And  Ben  Jon- 
son  collected  his  own  works  carefully  and 
saw  them  through  the  press.  But  Thomas 
Heywood  wrote,  either  alone  or  in  collabora- 
tion, upwards  of  220,  and  of  these  only 
twenty-four  remain.  Dekker  is  credited  with 
seventy-six  and  Rowley  with  fifty-five,  com- 
paratively few  of  which  are  now  known  to 
exist.  One  reason  why  such  a  large  propor- 
tion of  the  Elizabethan  plays  is  missing,  is 
that  the  theatre  companies  which  owned  the 
stage  copies  were  unwilling  to  have  them 
printed  and  thereby  made  accessible  to  read- 
ers and  liable  to  be  pirated  by  other  com- 
249 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
panics.  Manuscript  plays  were  a  valuable 
asset,  and  were  likely  to  remain  in  manu- 
script until  they  were  destroyed  or  dis- 
appeared. There  are  still  many  unpublished 
plays  of  that  period.  Thus  the  manuscript 
of  one  of  Heywood's  missing  plays  was  dis- 
covered and  printed  as  late  as  1885.  A 
curious  feature  of  the  old  drama  was  the 
practice  of  collaboration.  A  capital  instance 
of  this  was  the  long  partnership  of  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher.  But  often  three,  or 
sometimes  four  dramatists  collaborated  in  a 
single  piece.  It  is  difficult,  often  impossible, 
to  assign  the  different  parts  of  the  play  to 
the  respective  authors  and  much  critical  in- 
genuity has  been  spent  upon  the  problem, 
often  with  very  inconclusive  results.  To  in- 
crease the  difficulty  of  assigning  a  certain 
authorship,  many  old  plays  were  worked  over 
into  new  versions.  It  is  surmised  that 
Shakespeare  himself  collaborated  with 
Fletcher  in  "Henry  VIII,"  as  well  as  in  "The 
Two  Noble  Kinsmen,"  a  tragi-comedy  which 
is  not  included  in  the  Shakespeare  folio ;  that 
in  "Henry  VI"  he  simply  revamped  old 
chronicle-history  plays ;  that  "Hamlet"  was 
founded  on  a  lost  original  by  Kyd ;  that  "Ti- 
tus Andronicus"  and  possibly  "Richard  III" 
owe  a  great  deal  to  Marlowe;  and  that  the 
underplot  of  "The  Taming  of  the  Shrew" 
and  a  number  of  scenes  in  "Timon  of  Athens" 
250 


SHAKESPEARE'S  CONTEMPORARIES 
were  composed,  not  by  Shakespeare  but  by 
some  unknown  collaborator.  In  short  we 
are  to  look  upon  the  Elizabethan  theatre  as 
a  great  factory  and  school  of  dramatic  art, 
producing  at  its  most  active  period,  the  last 
ten  years  of  the  queen's  reign,  say,  from 
1593-1603,  some  forty  or  fifty  new  plays 
every  year :  masters  and  scholars  working  to- 
gether in  partnership,  not  very  careful  to 
claim  their  own,  not  very  scrupulous  about 
helping  themselves  to  other  people's  literary 
property :  something  like  the  mediaeval  guilds 
who  built  the  cathedrals ;  or  the  schools  of 
Italian  painters  in  the  fifteenth  century, 
where  it  is  not  always  possible  to  determine 
whether  a  particular  piece  of  work  is  by  the 
master  painter  or  by  one  of  the  pupils  in  his 
workshop.  Instances  of  collaboration  are  not 
unknown  in  modern  drama.  Robert  Louis 
Stevenson  and  W.  E.  Henley  wrote  several 
plays  in  partnership.  Charles  Reade  in  his 
comedy,  "Masks  and  Faces,"  called  in  the 
aid  of  Tom  Taylor,  who  was  an  actor  and 
practical  maker  of  plays.  But  these  are  ex- 
ceptions. Modern  dramatic  authorship  is 
individual:  Elizabethan  was  largely  corpo- 
rate. And  the  mention  of  Tom  Taylor  re- 
minds me  that  Elizabethan  drama  was,  in  an 
important  degree,  the  creation  of  the  actor- 
playwright.  Peele,  Jonson,  Shakespeare, 
Heywood,  Munday,  and  Rowley  certainly, 
251 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
Marlowe,  Kyd,  Greene,  and  many  others  prob- 
ably, were  actors  as  well  as  authors.  Beau- 
mont's father  was  a  judge,  and  Fletcher's 
father  was  the  Bishop  of  London,  but  they 
lodged  near  the  playhouses,  and  consorted 
with  Shakespeare  and  Ben  Jonson  at  the 
Mermaid  or  the  Devil  Tavern  or  the  Triple 
Tun  or  the  other  old  Elizabethan  ordinaries 
which  were  the  meeting  places  of  the  wits. 
In  fact,  it  is  evident  that  the  university  wits ; 
the  Bohemians  and  hack  writers  in  Hen- 
slow's  pay;  gentlemen  and  men  with  profes- 
sions, who  wrote  on  the  side,  such  as  Thomas 
Lodge  who  was  a  physician;  in  short,  the 
whole  body  of  Elizabethan  dramatists  kept 
themselves  in  close  touch  with  the  actual 
stage.  The  Elizabethan  drama  was  a  popular, 
yes,  a  national  institution.  All  classes  of  peo- 
ple frequented  the  rude  wooden  playhouses, 
some  of  which  are  reckoned  to  have  held  3000 
spectators.  The  theatre  was  to  the  public  of 
that  day  what  the  daily  newspaper,  the  ten- 
cent  pictorial  magazine,  the  popular  novel, 
the  moving  picture  show,  the  concert,  and  the 
public  lecture  all  combined  are  to  us.  And  I 
might  almost  add  the  club,  the  party  caucus, 
and  the  political  speech.  For  though  there 
were  social  convivial  gatherings  like  Ben  Jon- 
son's  Apollo  Club,  which  met  at  the  Devil 
Tavern,  the  playhouse  was  a  place  of  daily 
resort.  And  there  were  political  plays.  Mid- 
252 


SHAKESPEARE'S  CONTEMPORARIES 
dleton's  "A  Game  at  Chess,"  e.g.,  which  at- 
tracted enormous  crowds  and  had  the  then 
unexampled  run  of  nine  successive  perform- 
ances, was  a  satirical  attack  on  the  foreign 
policy  of  the  government ;  in  which  the  pieces 
of  the  game  were  thinly  disguised  representa- 
tives of  well-known  public  personages,  after 
the  manner  of  Aristophanes.  The  Spanish 
ambassador,  Gondomar,  who  figured  as  the 
Black  Knight,  remonstrated  with  the  privy 
council,  the  further  performance  of  the  play 
was  forbidden,  and  the  author  and  several 
of  the  company  were  sent  to  prison.  Simi- 
larly the  comedy  of  "Eastward  Ho!"  writ- 
ten by  Jonson,  Chapman,  Marston,  and  Dek- 
ker,  which  made  fun  of  James  I's  Scotch 
knights,  gave  great  offense  to  the  king,  and 
was  stopped  and  all  hands  imprisoned.  The 
Earl  of  Essex  had  the  tragedy  of  "Richard 
II,"  perhaps  Shakespeare's, — or  perhaps 
another  play  on  the  same  subject, — rehearsed 
before  his  fellow  conspirators  just  before  the 
outbreak  of  his  rebellion,  and  the  players 
found  themselves  arrested  for  treason. 

The  English  drama  was  self-originated 
and  self-developed,  like  the  Spanish,  but  un- 
like the  classical  stages  of  Italy  and  France. 
Coming  down  from  the  old  scriptural  and 
allegorical  plays,  the  miracles  and  moralities 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  it  began  to  lay  its  hands 
on  subject  matter  of  all  sorts:  Italian  and 
253 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
Spanish  romances  and  pastorals,  the  chroni- 
cles of  England,  contemporary  French  his- 
tory, ancient  histor}^  and  mythologj^,  Bible 
stories  and  legends  of  saints  and  martyrs, 
popular  ballad  and  folklore,  everyday  Eng- 
lish life  and  the  dockets  of  the  criminal 
courts.  It  treated  all  this  miscellaneous 
stuff  with  perfect  freedom,  striking  out  its 
own  methods.  Admitting  influences  from 
many  quarters,  it  naturally  owed  something 
to  the  classic  drama,  the  Latin  tragedies  of 
Seneca,  and  the  comedies  of  Plautus  and  Ter- 
ence, but  it  did  not  allow  itself  to  be  shackled 
by  classical  rules  and  models,  like  the  rule  of 
the  three  unities ;  or  the  precedent  which  for- 
bade the  mixture  of  tragedy  and  comedy  in 
the  same  play ;  or  the  other  precedents  which 
allowed  only  three  speakers  on  the  stage  at 
once  and  kept  all  violent  action  off  the  scene, 
to  be  reported  by  a  messenger,  rather  than 
pass  before  the  eyes  of  spectators.  The 
Elizabethans  favored  strong  action,  masses 
of  people,  spectacular  elements:  mobs,  bat- 
tles, single  combats,  trial  scenes,  deaths,  pro- 
cessions. The  English  instinct  was  for  quan- 
tity of  life,  the  Greek  and  the  French  for 
neatness  of  construction.  The  ghost  which 
stalks  in  Elizabethan  tragedy:  in  "Hamlet," 
"Richard  III,"  Kyd's  "The^  Spanish  Trag- 
edy," and  Marston's  "Antonio  and  Mel- 
lida"  comes  straight  from  Seneca.  But  except 
254 


SHAKESPEARE'S  CONTEMPORARIES 
for  a  few  direct  imitations  of  Latin  plays 
like  "Gorboduc"  and  "The  Misfortunes  of 
Arthur" — mostly  academic  performances — 
Elizabethan  tragedy  was  not  at  all  Senecan 
in  construction.  Let  us  take  a  few  forms  of 
drama,  which,  though  not  strictly  peculiar 
to  our  sixteenth  century  theatre,  were  most 
representative  of  it,  and  were  the  forms  in 
which  native  genius  expressed  itself  most 
characteristically.  I  will  select  the  tragi- 
comedy, the  chronicle-history,  and  the  ro- 
mantic melodrama  or  tragedy  of  blood.  In 
1579  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  who  was  a  classical 
scholar,  complained  that  English  plays  were 
neither  right  tragedies  nor  right  comedies, 
but  mongrel  tragi-comedies  which  mingled 
kings  and  clowns,  funerals  and  hornpipes. 
Nearly  a  century  and  a  half  later,  Addi- 
son, also  a  classical  scholar,  wrote :  "The 
tragi-comedy,  which  is  the  product  of  the 
English  theatre,  is  one  of  the  most  monstrous 
inventions  that  ever  entered  into  a  poet's 
thoughts.  An  author  might  as  well  think  of 
weaving  the  adventures  of  Aeneas  and  Hudi- 
bras  into  one  poem  as  of  writing  such  a  mot- 
ley piece  of  mirth  and  sorrow."  Sidney's  and 
Addison's  principles  would  have  condemned 
about  half  the  plays  of  Shakespeare  and  his 
contemporaries.  As  to  the  chronicle-history 
play,  Ben  Jonson,  who  was  a  classicist  writ- 
ing in  a  romantic  age,  had  his  fling  at  those 
255 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

who  with  "some  few  foot  and  half-foot  words 
fight  over  York  and  Lancaster's  long  jars." 
I  do  not  know  that  any  other  nation  pos- 
sesses anything  quite  like  this  series  of  Eng- 
lish kings  by  Shakespeare,  Marlowe,  Bale, 
Peele,  Ford,  and  many  others,  which  taken 
together  cover  nearly  four  centuries  of  Eng- 
lish history.  You  know  that  the  Duke  of 
Marlboro  said  that  all  he  knew  of  English 
history  he  had  learned  from  Shakespeare's 
plays ;  and  these  big,  patriotic  military 
dramas  must  have  given  a  sort  of  historical 
education  to  the  audiences  of  their  time.  The 
material,  to  be  sure,  was  much  of  it  epic 
rather  than  properly  dramatic,  and  in  the 
hands  of  inferior  artists  it  remained  lumpy 
and  shockingly  crude.  To  obtain  comic  re- 
lief, the  playwrights  sandwiched  in  between 
the  serious  parts,  scenes  of  horseplay,  buf- 
foonery, and  farce,  which  had  little  to  do  with 
the  history.  But  in  the  hands  of  a  great 
artist,  all  this  was  reduced  to  harmony. 
Henry  IV,  Part  I,  is  not  only  a  great  liter- 
ary work,  but  a  first-class  acting  play.  The 
tragedy  is  very  high  tragedy  and  the  Fal- 
staff  scenes  very  broad  comedy,  but  they  are 
blended  so  skilfully  that  each  heightens  the 
effect  of  the  other  without  disturbing  the 
unity  of  impression.  As  to  the  romantic 
melodrama  or  tragedy  of  blood,  the  Eliza- 
bethans had  a  strong  appetite  for  sensation, 
256 


SHAKESPEARE'S  CONTEMPORARIES 
and  many  of  their  most  powerful  plays  were 
of  this  description:  Marlowe's  "Tambur- 
laine,"  Shakespeare's  "Lear,"  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher's  "Maid's  Tragedy,"  Middleton's 
"Changeling,"  Webster's  "Duchess  of 
Malfi,"  and  scores  of  others,  which  employ 
what  has  been  called  solution  by  massacre, 
and  whose  stage  in  the  fifth  act  is  as  bloody 
as  a  shambles.  Even  in  the  best  of  these, 
great  art  is  required  to  reconcile  the  nerves 
of  the  modern  reader  to  the  numerous  kill- 
ings. In  the  extreme  examples  of  the  type, 
like  "Titus  Andronicus"  (doubtfully  Shake- 
speare's), Marlowe's  "Jew  of  Malta,"  or  the 
old  "Spanish  Tragedy,"  or  Cyril  Tourneur's 
"Revenger's  Tragedy,"  the  theme  is  steeped 
so  deeply  in  horrors  and  monstrosities,  that 
it  passes  over  into  farce.  For  the  great  defect 
of  Elizabethan  drama  is  excess,  extrava- 
gance. In  very  few  plays  outside  of  Shake- 
speare do  we  find  that  naturalness,  that  re- 
straint, decorum  and  moderation  which  is  a 
part  of  the  highest  and  finest  art.  Too  many 
of  the  plots  and  situations  are  fantastically 
improbable :  too  many  of  the  passions  and 
characters  strained  and  exaggerated,  though 
life  and  vigor  are  seldom  wanting.  This  is 
seen  in  their  comedies  as  well  as  in  their 
tragedies.  Thus,  Ben  Jonson,  an  admirable 
comic  artist,  ranking  next,  I  think,  after 
Shakespeare,  a  very  learned  man  and  ex- 
257 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
haustless  in  observation  and  invention;  very 
careful,  too,  in  construction  and  endeavoring 
a  reform  of  comedy  along  truly  classical  lines 
— Ben  Jonson,  I  say,  chose  for  his  province 
the  comedy  of  humors ;  i.e.,  the  exhibition  of 
all  varieties  of  oddity,  eccentricity,  whim, 
affectation.  Read  his  "Every  Man  in  His  Hu- 
mour" or  his  "Bartholomew  Fair"  and  you 
will  find  a  satirical  picture  of  all  the  queer 
fashions  and  follies  of  his  contemporary  Lon- 
don. His  characters  are  sharply  distinguished 
but  they  are  too  queer,  too  overloaded  with 
traits,  so  that  we  seem  to  be  in  an  asylum 
for  cranks  and  monomaniacs,  rather  than  in 
the  broad,  natural,  open  daylight  of  Shakes- 
peare's creations.  So  the  tyrants  and  vil- 
lains of  Elizabethan  melodrama  are  too  often 
incredible  creatures  beyond  the  limits  of  hu- 
manit}'. 

It  is  perhaps  due  to  their  habit  of  mixing 
tragedy  and  comedy  that  the  Elizabethan 
dramatists  made  so  much  use  of  the  double 
plot ;  for  the  main  plot  was  often  tragical 
and  the  underplot  comical  or  farcical. 
Shakespeare,  who  at  all  points  was  superior 
to  his  fellows,  knew  how  to  knit  his  dupli- 
cate plots  together  and  make  them  inter- 
dependent. But  in  pieces  like  Middleton's 
"Changeling"  or  "The  Mayor  of  Queens- 
boro,"  the  main  plot  and  the  subplot  have 
nothing  to  do  with  each  other  and  simply  run 
258 


SHAKESPEARE'S  CONTEMPORARIES 
along  in  alternate  scenes,  side  by  side.  This 
is  true  of  countless  plays  of  the  time  and  is 
ridiculed  by  Sheridan  in  his  burlesque  play 
"The  Critic."  Let  it  also  be  remembered 
that  an  Elizabethan  tragedy  was  always  a 
poem — always  in  verse.  Prose  was  reserved 
for  comedy,  or  for  the  comedy  scenes  in  a 
tragedy.  The  only  prose  tragedy  that  has 
come  down  to  us  from  those  times  is  the  sin- 
gular little  realistic  piece  entitled  "The 
Yorkshire  Tragedy,"  the  story  of  a  murder. 
A  very  constant  feature  of  the  old  drama 
was  the  professional  fool,  jester,  or  kept 
clown,  with  his  motley  coat,  truncheon,  and 
cap  and  bells.  In  most  plays  he  was  simply 
a  stock  fun  maker,  though  Shakespeare  made 
a  profound  and  subtle  use  of  him  in  "As  You 
Like  It"  and  in  "Lear."  The  last  court  jester 
or  king's  fool  was  Archie  Armstrong,  fool 
of  Charles  I.  After  the  Restoration  he  was 
considered  as  old-fashioned  and  disappeared 
from  the  stage  along  with  puns  and  other 
obsolete  forms  of  wit.  Opera  and  pantomime 
were  not  introduced  into  England  until  late 
in  the  seventeenth  century:  but  the  Eliza- 
bethans had  certain  forms  of  quasi-dramatic 
entertainment  such  as  the  court  masque,  the 
pageant,  and  the  pastoral,  which  have  since 
gone  out.  They  were  responsible  for  some 
fine  poetry  like  Fletcher's  "Faithful  Shep- 
herdess," Jonson's  fragment  "The  Sad  Shep- 
259 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 
herd"  and  Milton's  "Comus."  Of  late  years 
the  pageant  has  been  locally  revived  in  Eng- 
land, at  Oxford,  at  Coventry,  and  elsewhere. 
Now  since  it  has  ceased  to  be  performed, 
what  is  the  value  of  the  old  drama,  as  litera- 
ture, as  a  body  of  reading  plays?  Of  the 
200  known  writers  for  the  theatre,  ten  at 
least  were  men  of  creative  genius,  Marlowe, 
Chapman,  Shakespeare,  Jonson,  Dekker, 
Webster,  Middleton,  Fletcher,  Beaumont, 
and  Massinger.  At  least  a  dozen  more  were 
men  of  high  and  remarkable  talents,  Lyly, 
Peele,  Greene,  Marston,  Ford,  Heywood, 
Shirley,  Tourneur,  Kyd,  Day,  Rowley, 
Brome.  Scarcely  one  of  them  but  has  con- 
tributed single  scenes  of  great  excellence,  or 
invented  one  or  two  original  and  interesting 
characters,  or  written  passages  of  noble 
blank  verse  and  lovely  lyrics.  Even  the  poor- 
est of  them  were  inheritors  or  partakers  of 
a  great  poetic  tradition,  a  gift  of  style,  so 
that,  in  plaj's  very  defective,  as  a  whole,  we 
are  constantly  coming  upon  lines  of  startling 
beauty  like  Middleton's 

Ha !  what  art  thou  that  taks't  away  the  light 
Betwixt  that  star  and  me? 

or  Marston's 

Night,  like  a  masque,  has  entered  heaven's  high 

hall. 
With  thousand  torches  ushering  the  way. 
260 


SHAKESPEARE'S  CONTEMPORARIES 
or  Beaumont's 

Cover  her  face:  mine  eyes  dazzle:  she  died 
3'oung. 

But  when  all  has  been  said,  and  in  spite  of 
enthusiasts  like  Lamb  and  Hazlitt  and  Swin- 
burne, I  fear  it  must  be  acknowledged  that, 
outside  of  Shakespeare,  our  old  dramatists 
produced  no  plays  of  the  absolutely  first 
rank;  no  tragedies  so  perfect  as  those  of 
Sophocles  and  Euripides ;  no  comedies  equal 
to  Moliere's.  Nay,  I  would  go  further,  and 
affirm  that  not  only  has  the  Elizabethan 
drama — excluding  Shakespeare — nothing  to 
set  against  the  first  part  of  Goethe's  "Faust," 
but  that  its  best  plays  are  inferior,  as  a 
whole,  to  the  best  of  Aristophanes,  of  Cal- 
deron,  of  Racine,  of  Schiller,  even  perhaps  of 
Victor  Hugo,  Sheridan  and  Beaumarchais. 
It  is  as  Coleridge  said:  great  beauties,  coun- 
terbalanced by  great  faults.  Ben  Jonson  is 
heavy-handed  and  laborious ;  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher  graceful,  fluent  and  artistic,  but 
superficial  and  often  false  in  characteriza- 
tion; Webster,  intense  and  powerful  in  pas- 
sion, but  morbid  and  unnatural;  Middleton, 
frightfully  uneven;  Marlowe  and  Chapman 
high  epic  poets  but  with  no  flexibility  and  no 
real  turn  for  drama. 

Yet  unsatisfactory  as  it  is,  when  judged 
by  any  single  play,  the  work  of  the  Eliza- 
261 


L 


THE  CONNECTICUT  WITS 

bethans,  when  viewed  as  a  whole,  makes  an 
astonishing  impression  of  fertility,  of  force, 
of  range,  variety,  and  richness,  both  in  in- 
vention and  in  expression. 


262 


PRINTED  BY  E.  L.  HILDRETH  &  COMPANY, 
BRATTLEBORO,  VERMONT,  U.  S.  A. 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A     000  541  191     3 


